


The Legacy of Nyon

by Iron



Series: Ignatious, Ignite [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien anatomy, Bad Parenting, Cannibalism, Child Abuse, M/M, Mechpreg, Nyon - Freeform, Pre-War Cybertron, Runaway Captaincy, Sparklings, child endangerment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:11:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 59,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7721326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iron/pseuds/Iron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ignis doesn't know what his carrier is running from, only that he started long before Ignis was sparked. He doesn't belong anywhere; not among Cybertronians he's never known, nor the organic crews his carrier works with. A chance encounter with a Cybertronian ship gives him a chance to find a home. </p>
<p>Hot Rod was sparked in the tunnels beneath Nyon, to the long-exiled archivists eeking out a living in secret. In a world on the brink of civil war, he's caught between the secrets of his family and the world he longs to belong to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Ceryllia VI is a slagheap of a planet, but it makes a good pitstop. A den for criminals, thieves, and low-lives, Excelsior steps off the ship the _Barisa_ with a skip to his peds and a song in his spark, ready to meet the day with a smile and a blaster to the face. Trailing behind him, Ignis grumbles. 

“Maaatri,” he whines, “I don’t see why we can’t keep our contract with the _Barisa_.” Comically large optics widen even further, cleanser fluid rimming the edges. 

The air of innocence he’s attempting to carry around himself is more than somewhat foiled by the gunmods on his forearms and the way he’s eying the people they pass like thieve’s marks. As they pass a hulking Dirandran, an orc like creature dressed in military fatigues with far too many pockets for it to keep track of, Excelsior taps on the mechlet’s head. “Don’t even think about it, bit.” 

Ignis huffs. “Whatever. It’s not like we’d ever come back if we _were_ caught. Because we’re leaving. Again.” 

This conversation is one they’ve been having for weeks, and one that they have every time they change ships; inevitably, Excelsior always gives the mechlet the same answer.“We’ve gotta keep moving, bit.” 

Fans whir as he huffs. “What are we even running away from?” He snarls. “I don’t even know why we’re leaving this time.” The contract was up, but he’d _heard_ Captain Iz’marra offer Excelsior another one. They could have stayed. 

Excelsior hums, and then tilts his head up to feel the sun on his faceplates. There’s the faintest sound of a transformation cog as plating rolls over in tiny octagonal panels on his chassis, servos, and peds, revealing glimmering yellow solar harvesters. “Well, kiddo, let’s go find us a news ship!” 

“You’re ignoring me again!” 

“Because we’ve already talked about this.” Excelsior pushes through the organic crowds with ease, mindful not to hurt them but unwilling to give way. His own paint, yellow and purple, shines through like a beacon to their instincts; here be poison, here be danger. “It’s not safe for us to stay too long anywhere.” 

“ _Why_! You’ve never told me -” He bites down on the rest of his diatribe. 

“We’re not having this conversation, bit. Stop asking.” Excelsior holds his feild tight and tense. 

He stops asking. 

Ignis is smaller than his creator, only coming up to his waist, and has to use more force to keep up with him. The organics of Ceryllia VI are taller than average, most almost as tall as his carrier. No one on the pirate planet is polite enough to make way for a kid trying to keep up with his creator. He slips through the gaps in the unwashed bodies, peering around shoulders and tentacles to get a better look at the shipyard they’d landed in. 

He knows where this conversation is going. He’d ask why, and his matri would avoid answering, and they’d argue until he was grounded and then he wouldn’t even get a choice about what he’ll get to do on the next ship they signed on with. All he’d get is annoyed and angry and stuck in a situation he doesn’t like. 

Instead he drops the conversation. “I want to explore.” 

“No.” 

“I’m old enough! And Mister B’rek said that I was getting really good with my guns! I can totally protect myself if that’s what you’re thinking.” He puffs his cheeks out. 

“Still no.” The larger mech singsongs. Ignis has always found that habit insufferable, and his carrier knows it, smirking when the mechlet’s grumbles grow only more irate. “Now, I’m gonna go find us a ship, and you’re going to sit tight out here and shoot anyone that looks like they’re getting to close to you.” 

They’ve stopped outside a strip of stores. The one his carrier had chosen was obviously a bar, even if Ignis can’t read the organic language the sign is written in. He’d been to a lot of bars in his life. “I’m just supposed to sit out here and wait for you _again_?” 

“I’ll bring you back an order of magnesium crumbles, kiddo.” 

It takes a long moment of consideration before the youngling begrudgingly says, “Fine.” For his compliance he receives a brisk but affectionate pat on the head. “Tell ‘em I want to do engineering!” 

“I’ll be back out in a bit, okay kiddo? And I promise, this time I’ll get us an extra long contract. Okay? A nice ship with fun things for you to do. I’ll see if I can even get you your own room this time!” Ignis ignores him, sitting criss-cross by the door. He turns to face the street, faceplates deliberately empty of expression. 

“Whatever. It’s not like it matters how long we stay somewhere...”

Behind him, Excelsior grimaces. He hovers in the doorway for a moment, unsure, before turning to go inside. He’ll fix it later. It’s just a kid thing. 

\-- 

Ignis waits until his carrier is inside before standing and slipping into the crowd. His carrier thinks he’s too young, but _he_ knows better. He’s been exploring space since before he was born! Obviously that means he knows what he’s doing. _And_ he’s a well armed machine. 

He hums to himself as he peers into the shops on the strip. 

There’s a little collection of credits tucked away in his subspace, earned by doing bits and bobs around the spaceships his carrier serves on. He wants a new shammy for polishing or something. Or some decals? Since his last paint job - purple and grey temp paint for the port - covered up the flames on his chest he doesn’t really have anything fun on his paintjob. Murek, the engineer from the crew before last, had been a Surlaxian with an awesome set of decal tattoo things on his chest. Ignis wants something like that. Or maybe flowers...? It’s really hard to decide when he actually has a choice. 

He’s still trying to decide what he wants when a stranger’s field brushes against his own. Shuddering, he looks around for the source. 

When was the last time he’d felt something like that? Years, he thinks, not since the last Cybertronian he and his carrier had run into, and even then he’d only felt it for a moment before he’d been ripped away and hidden. The memory is half corrupted by time already. Soon he’ll forget it happened at all. 

It only takes a second’s debate with himself - follow the field and meet another Cybertronian or stay and finish his shopping and _never_ meet another Cybertronian - before he’s darting off after where he thinks the Cybertronian went. The mech doesn’t tower over anyone, and Ignis needs to catch glimpses of orange plating and balloon his EMF to brush against his just to keep track of him in the crowds. 

The foreign field weird and sort of tingly. Strange. Not at all like Excelsior’s. 

He doesn’t realize how far he’s followed the mech until he’s standing in front of a frankly gigantic starship at the edge of the shipyard and there are actual, honest-to-Deity Cybertronians in front of him. And there must be dozens! 

They’re all brightly painted as birds, in shapes he’d never seen before. Some of them have odd bits attached to their plating and some of them are so skinny in places he doesn’t know how they haven’t snapped in half, and a few are so huge he thinks that they might be spaceships in their own right. Most of them are as big as his carrier! That’s, like, twice his size! 

Gaping open mouthed, he hides behind a crate to watch them go about their business. 

For a while, all he does is watch. The giant blue and red one is sort of stiff and officious, like a Quartermaster that actually does his job. The red and white one that isn’t small is grumpy, and he likes to be next to the white and red one that has the swords, and the small one left pretty much immediately but he never shut up when he was doing it. 

Ignis decides he likes the ones without faces, because when they move it’s like their whole bodies are their faces, and he can tell what they’re saying even from his hiding place. There’s a teal and yellow one that seems to be enjoying his chance to just watch everyone, doing the same thing Ignis is doing, and people keep walking up to talk to him so he keeps watching him. 

It’s not until his struts start to ache from keeping still so long that he gets the grand idea to go on board. His vents hitch at the thought. He wouldn’t even need to talk to anyone! Just sneak on board for a bit and look around. See what it what like when he was on a vessel actually meant for Cybertronians. To not feel like an _alien_ all the time. 

There’s a lot of mechs going in and out of the ship, but Ignis doesn’t think for a second that they won’t notice an interloper in their midst - there’s no ship big enough to _really_ allow for strangers. Everyone can at least recognize someone who’s not supposed to be there, even if they don’t know everyone’s names. 

He has to wrack his brain for almost ten minutes, watching them go in and out of the ship, to figure out that if he can sneak aboard under one of the cargo carriers he’ll be pretty much home-free. They’re long, flat pieces of metal with a tall hand bar and anti-gravs welded to each corner, meant for pulling cargo on board. Most organic sized ones wouldn’t fit him, but these _aren’t_ sized for organics. They’re more than large enough for him to get under and cling to the bottom of. 

He watches with keen optics for the perfect chance. Two mechanoids seem to be in charge of hauling whatever the ship needed on board.

The big red and blue one watches them, coordinating which crates they take when and where they’re putting them. The two haulers stop and chat with people all the time. If they were actually working, Ignis can’t help but think, then they’d already be done and having fun. It’s dumb that they’d rather waste time on the job instead of finishing it faster and just getting it over with. 

It helps _him_ though. Eventually one of them - the green and grey one - stops by the crates and gets distracted talking to a yellow one with treads. When he does that, Ignis darts around the edge of the crates and rolls under the cart. He has to activate his mag-digits to attach himself to the bottom, but the drain on his energy levels is totally worth it when the bot stops wasting time and starts pushing the cart into the ship. Even when he loads it a bit too much and it sinks down, the swell of his spoiler hub scraping the dirt, and he has to suck in his belly and pull himself up flush to the bottom of the cart, it’s totally worth it! He’s sneaking onto the ship! 

He’s finally going to see what it’s like to be an actual Cybertronian!

\-- 

Rodimus walks into the bar with an uneasy fuel tank. His fuel tank is always uneasy these days, though. Ignis, little brat that he is, is getting anxious to set down roots somewhere, and he’s getting old enough to speak his mind. 

Ordering a tall glass of something less than refined (it may or may not be the sludge scraped out of the bottom of a ship’s fuel tank, the way it looks) he searches out his contact. Two thousand credits a year go towards the mech he’s paying to set up his contracts - he’d better make _his_ contacts easy to find. 

He does. Only moments after he starts searching, a tiny organic pulls himself up onto the stool beside him. His skin is a bright, cheery green, with soft, fibrous green hair and wide blue eyes. The look of him reminds Rodimus of Ignis when he was only a few years old. He has strut-thin limbs and small, delicate features like a sparkling. It makes his carrier coding perk up.

“You Saule?” Rodimus scowls at the name. _Sun_? Corick must have been in a puns mood recently. 

“Only if you’re Asrik.” A perfunctory nod. Rodimus sips his drink, winces at the gritty taste, and sets it aside. “I’m looking for a long term contract for me and one dependant who can work but won’t be operating as a full time agent.” 

“Injured?” 

“Young. I’d rather him get to play while he can.” 

“I didn’t know you robots had hatchlings. Ain’t you all built as adults or somethin? Heard once that you wake up and you’re already killing machines. Programming or whatever.” Rodimus winces. 

“We... don’t. Sometimes we do. It’s complicated.” 

“Look, we ain’t looking to take on any dead weight. You on the ship, you’re working. That gonna be a problem for you and your whatever it is?” 

“Depends on the work. I got word you needed a transport and some muscle. My bit - and, yes, that is a _technical term_ \- my bit works on engines and he works on fetch ‘n carry. Nothing that’ll put him in the way of people who’ll shoot at him or some slag.” Rodimus lets the words hang between them like a threat. He’s been on ships with captains that took one look at Ignis, saw his size and his guns and the way he wants to make everyone around him happy, and gleefully taken advantage of him. If he can head that off before they take off, he’s all the happier for it. 

“He a good engineer? Mine could use an assistant.” The little organic is shrewd. 

“Passable, but he’s smart. He’ll learn faster than yours can teach him.” And, Primus, Ignis is. Far too smart for Rodimus to keep up with, anyways, always racing ahead to learn the next thing, experience it, live it and learn it and tear it down to its component parts and examine every piece. He certainly didn’t get his processor from his creator in any case. “And he’s eager.” 

“We gonna have a problem with that...” He waves his hand in the air. 

“War’s over. No one gives a frag about two Neutrals wandering their way through the universe, trust me.” He rolls his shoulders, fidgeting thumb scraping the paint from the bottoms of his fingers. “We’re footloose and fancy free.” 

“If you say so. Standard pay’s fifty credits a day, ration a whatever you need, and a place to sleep, though the only place you’re gonna fit is the cargo bay, buddy.” 

“That’s fine. Ignis is gonna take the room - he’s about the right size, looking at you. Additional credits for him, too, plus a ration. We don’t work without pay.” 

“Half pay for half work.” 

“Only if you’re only _working_ him half as much, and I know your engineer’s going to be riding his aft. Three quarters pay and work hours clearly outlined for whoever’s in charge of him.” 

“Deal.” They don’t shake on it- they’re not the right size - but the organic lays one hand on Rodimus’ servo and he sort of bobs it up and down, and that works. 

Rodimus orders them both another drink and they start to hash out the finer details of ship’s life. 

_This time,_ he thinks, _We’ll make a trip of it._

\-- 

Ignis is so excited his fans stall and he nearly overheats as he waits for the mech to look away long enough for him to escape. He’s hauling boxes around in a maze of other boxes, the order of which not even the mech putting them away seems to understand. But, finally, the mech is far enough away that he feels safe to drop onto the floor, roll out from under the cart, and dust his plating off. Glancing around nervously, he skitters off to parts currently unknown but _exciting_ and _new_! 

He laughs when he sneaks onto the lift. It’s empty, and he’s never felt so damned lucky in his life. But! But the hallways are _lava_. Well, they’re rife with mechs, anyways, and his carrier use to say that when he snuck Ignis into the vents. The mech would shove him into the ceiling and whisper that to him, and then he’d get to sit in the ceiling for hours. It was cool, when it wasn’t scary. The floor is lava and he can’t touch it. He doesn’t want to get caught when he’s gotten so far! 

Activating his mag-digits, he skitters up the wall to push up the elevator hatch. The shaft is dark and clear, the lift operating on something other than a pulley system, which makes it easy for him to crawl up the walls. 

How high is he going to go? Well, to the top obviously. That’s where the bridge is! Probably. Usually. Some ships are way weirder than others. 

Ignis has crawled through a lot of elevator shafts. And a lot of air ducts. And steam tunnels. Most ships have similar layouts even when they’re built by completely different speiceis. He’s long suspected mind control is behind that. Mind control or some sort of universal hive mind. 

The ship is huge. His arms are getting tired. His legs are already shaking from the effort of holding him parallel to the wall. The only light to see by is the dim glow of his optics and his yellow biolights, and he’s nearly blind. Still, he perseveres. His carrier taught him how to carry on no matter what! 

There’s a whir, the sound of something moving way, way too fast up the elevator shaft. The elevator! Ignis bites back a scream that turns into a squeak, scrambling the twenty or so yards up the elevator shaft and to the nearest door. The elevator is faster than he is but it’s coming from the ground floor, and that gives him enough time to wedge his fingers into the door. He pushes them open, inch by inch, struts creaking and gears stripping as he forces the doors open. 

It’s never been this hard before! He actually does want to scream now, out of frustration and not fear, because it shouldn’t be _this hard_ when he’s never had any trouble before! 

The elevator scrapes the paint off his heel when he tumbles through the door, making it by a hair’s breath. 

His fans whine as he lets the near-death experience wash over him. He giggles, high and hiccupping, and rolls onto his back. The hallway is empty. Deities, was everyone on shore leave or something? 

Laying there, he lets the heat leech off his frame for a few more moments. Then he rolls back over and stands up, still trembling a little. But he’s okay! It’s just a little bit of paint. Pretty much nothing to him! He can shake it off! 

He looks around the hallways. At least he’s not stuck on a level that’s all habsuites - it looks like he’d found labs or something, or maybe offices? Offices were cool, but labs were cooler. His carrier likes to tell him about all the crazy stuff scientists can make, like time machines and ennui guns and robots that stand on top of each other to become a bigger robot! 

Privately he thinks being a scientist must be even cooler than being an engineer. Scientists can break the _universe_ if they’re smart enough. 

Trotting down the hallway, he keys open the doors as he passes them. When he gets to the first unlocked one he darts inside, looking around excitedly. 

It’s empty. There’s a desk, and a chair, and shelves on the wall, but it’s pretty much empty. 

It’s the biggest room Ignis has ever been in. 

He climbs up on the chair, and he actually has to climb up onto it! When he sits down he feels tiny, and he has to tilt his chin up to look over the desk. He grins, going up on his knees and looks over the vast expanse of his kingdom. He’s never seen a desk so huge! 

Scrambling down, he darts out of the room to look for something more interesting than an empty office. 

Most of them are empty. Most of them don’t even open. 

He must have wandered the halls for _forever_ before he finds a door that opens for him that’s more than an empty room. It’s even better than a used office! It’s a _lab_! 

_A lab!_

There are weird things in beakers and weird electronics on tables and tools and wires and everything is amazing and cool and - ! 

His fans stall in his excitement. His vocalizer spits static. Climbing up onto a chair, he stairs at the tableful of stuff. A beaker has something bubbling and bright green in it, and something else has steam floating from the neon pink surface. 

Ignis wants to poke it. He’s only stopped by the sharp _beep!_ of one of the contraptions on the table.

“WARNING: STUPID” it screeches, startling the mechlet. His wrist hits the beaker, and it shatters, splattering green over the table. 

“Ach!” He cries. “...uh oh.” The weird object on the table start to melt to slag. “I’m in so much trouble.” 

He stares at the table. 

He thinks about the last time he was caught sneaking around. 

Then he thinks about how angry his carrier would be picking him up from a police station again.

Ignis, ever intelligent, scrambles up the nearest wall and through a vent. 

Someone _else_ can get in trouble for that. 

The airducts are really nice on this ship. “Does someone clean these out?” He mutters under his breath. “Why would they even do that? It’s not ... like...” He trails off. A metaphorical lightbulb just went off in his head. “...People use these, don’t they?” 

In the distance, like the rumble of stampeding Maremoths, he hears the engines online. 

“...Matri’s going to kill me.” 

\--

Rodimus stretches as he stands. “That everything?” 

“Yeah. Ship takes off in three days. You’re there or you’re not.” 

“We’ll be there.” He stumbles a bit as he heads to the door, but it’s nothing worse than it usually is after one of these meetings. He’s only a little overcharged, energy buzzing pleasantly in his joints, nothing to _really_ worry about. 

Outside, he checks for Ignis. No kid; it looks like the mech hasn’t been around for a while either. It’s not unusual. The bit had inherited Rodimus’ need for independence, and this isn’t the first time he’s wandered off after he’s taken too long in a meeting. “Ignis?” He calls out, just incase the mech’s still within audio shot. After a moment he opens up their comms. ::Ignis:: He reproaches, ::where are you?:: 

Static races across their line so loud and shrill that it _hurts_. ::Matri!:: His bit screams, and it’s more than the connection that’s causing static. ::Matri I was following the robots and I’m on their ship and I’m stuck he--:: The comms cuts off. 

Rodimus feels his spark contract to a pinpoint in his chamber. 

Terror, raw and primal, floods his frame. Again and again, until the clicking sound of a dropped signal rasps against his audios, he attempts to contact him. 

Dropping into alt, he races towards the ship yards. How many mechanoids had taken off in the past five minutes? Ten? It couldn’t have been more than one. He just needs them to turn around. 

Primus, please, let there only have been one. 

Primus, please make them turn the hell around. 

Because if they didn’t Rodimus would bring their ship down and _roast them all alive_.


	2. Chapter 2

Ignis shudders as the comm shuts off, scrabbling out of the vent. “Frag frag frag frag...” He mutters until the word became just another nonsense sound in his audials. His spark is pulsing erratically, fans stuttering as he runs through the halls looking for anyone - anything - _something_ to help him. 

He’s never been so far from his carrier before. The distance pricks at his awareness, settling in the back of his processor like heavy metals in a cube of energon. He wants to go home. Whatever adventure the ship had been it’s nothing more than a nightmare now. He wants his carrier. 

The first mech he runs into on the ship is a huge blue and yellow one. He doesn’t even notice him at first, his helm shoved up close to read a datapad. The mech is holding his chin, muttering to himself in a funny sort of way that Ignis thinks reminds him of the guy his carrier goes to meet sometimes. Ignis isn’t allowed to meet him yet, but sometimes he’d watch from the windows when his carrier did.

He swallows down his worry and waits for the mech to notice him. 

And waits. 

And ends up staring at his back as the mech walks right by him. “How’d you survive a whole frelling war?” He grumbles. “Situational awareness of a plomeek.” Venting, he cups his mouth and yells, “Fragface! I’m a stowaway! Take me to your leader!” 

The mech jumps, so startled he drops his datapad. It goes skittering across the floor. Ignis snickers. “Frag are you?!” He yelps, turning to stare at him. 

“I just _told_ you, I’m a stowaway. You need to take me back to port.” Ignis crosses his arms, tapping his ped on the floor. “Or to your captain or whatever so I can tell _him_ to take me back to port.” 

Rough servos grab his arm to fast for him dodge, hauling him into the air. He keens; it _hurts_. The cables of his arm aren’t meant to hold his weight like this. He can feel them over extending, free hand scrabbling against thick armour, peds hooking into kibble to alleviate his weight. “Scruff bar! Holy Deity grab my torring scruff bar!” 

“Your what?” 

“Behind my head!” He risks letting go of jutting armor to pet the awkward, thick piece of armour behind his head. 

The mech adjusts his grip, fingers hooking under the piece of armor hold him up. It’s undignified but comfortable. His carrier used to lug him around like this when he tried to wander off too many times in an orn, hauling him up by his scruff and ignoring it when he started kicking and screaming to be put down.

“I can’t believe you come with handholds,” the mech snorts. 

“ _I_ can’t believe you’re taking so long to haul me to the bridge.” Ignis hisses, kicking the mech in the thigh hard enough to dent the military grade. “Mush, robot, mush!” 

The mech shakes him. “You’re a little aft head, aren’t you?” He’s walking towards the elevator, only leaning down to retrieve his dropped datapad. 

“And you guys are the butts who don’t warn people before you shoot off into who-knows-where space.” Grumbling the mechlet watches the ‘bots they pass by. They all just look so strange to him. He’s never seen so many different mechanoids before. Somehow, he’d always thought they looked like him or his carrier - sharp angles and thin struts, made for speed and fire - but they don’t. Most of them don’t look anything like him or Excelsior. They look like war machines, all heavy armor and guns magnetizes to their bodies. He might have guns but he was _unfurled_ with those. They weren’t modded on. 

They step onto the lift, and as it moves the tinkling sound of elevator music filters through it. “...Ugh, you guys have really bad taste in music.” 

“Trust me, mech, I wasn’t the one to choose this.” Two faceplates met in matching grimaces. “Blame our comms officer.” 

“Is there any way to just... turn it off?” 

“Nope.” 

They spend the rest of the short trip in commiserating silence. 

Stepping out onto the bridge is almost a relief. “Hey Captain! I found a stowaway!” The mech carrying him yells, attracting the attention of the entire bridge. 

“You didn’t find me! I jumped out and yelled at you!”

The grey mech, huge even when sitting down in the captain’s chair, stands to look. “A spy?” Ignis squirms, kicking out, attempting to free himself. How dare he be introduced to the captain while being carried around like some - some - some kitten! 

“No! I was just looking around a bit! I was gonna get off before you guys left but you took off without saying anything!” Whining, he finally gives up his bid for freedom to cross his arms. “Look, mech, I’ve got to get back to port before Matri realizes I’m gone.” 

“You were... looking around.” The grey mech sighs. “You were spying.” 

“No! Spying means you’re thinking of telling someone or taking something. I just wanted to see a real live Cybertronian ship. The kind my Matri used to serve on!” He widens his optics, letting cleanser fluid flood the glass as he quiets his engine to a low, shy rumble. “Really, mister, I just got really excited ‘cause I’ve never seen a real live Cybertronian before.” 

Ignis is well aware of the fact that he is, by most species’ standards, utterly adorable. Something about his huge, glassy blue optics and clean, sharp lines tugged at the blood-pushers of organics. It used to work better when he was smaller, but here he’s still obviously considered tiny. He probably doesn’t even come up to the grey mech’s thighs. 

“You were spying.” 

Ignis huffs. “I just said I wasn’t! And I wanna go home now. So turn around and go back to port or something.” 

“We are _not_ turning this ship around! You’ll be lucky if we don’t consign you to the brig and bring you up on charges!” 

“You can’t do that!” Ignis screeches. “I’m too young to bring up on charges. I don’t know any better. So _there_!” He kicks out again, hands scraping against the servo clutching his scruff bar. “And let me down already!” 

Two huge hands wrap around his waist. Immediately Ignis stills. “Stop that,” the grey mech commands. Ignis whimpers. “What is your name?” 

“I-Ignis of Excelsior.” It feels like ants are crawling over his plating. He can feel those huge hands, the power in them, the way they’d need to exert only a little more pressure to crush his abdomen entirely. It’d take so little to crush him. 

Sharp red eyes stare at him. He wonders if they see the terror in his own optics, or if he just hears the whine of suddenly overtaxed systems. It’s then that he realizes that he’s been engulfed by the mech’s field. It buzzes against his senses, miasmic and thick, making him quell in his armor. He can do little else but shiver and quake. He’s carried over to a big red mech. “Give Blaster the comm signature to connect with this ‘Matri’, Ignis.” 

“Tw-twenty ninety forty-six,” he says. “Um, I can’t connect with them on my comms, how can you do yours?” 

“Ship’s got specialized equipment I use,” the mech says. “Comes with being a comms officer.” 

“Were you the guy that chose the ele -” 

The comm line gets picked up. “Who the frag is this and where the hell did you get this frelling number?!” His carrier’s voice echoes in the room. Ignis can feel his helm sink down as his shoulders hike up around his finials. 

“Hi, Matri.” He mumbles. 

“Ignis? Ignis, bitlet, are you okay?” The worry in his carrier’s voice is clear, tone suddenly gentle and sweet. “Ignis, if you’re okay then when I get my servos on you I’m going to beat your aft ‘til it’s dented flat.” 

“Yes, Matri.” He mumbles. His cheeks grow heat-flushed as he realizes the rest of the bridge is listening. Deity, this is embarrassing. “I’m okay. I wanna go home.” 

“We found your ... _bitlet_ wandering our ship. Care to explain?” The captain’s voice is low and menacing. It makes Ignis shiver, plating clattering as much as it can. 

There’s a long pause, and then Excelsior hisses, “What ship did you sneak onto _this_ time, Ignatious?” 

“Don’t _call_ me that, Matri!” He squeaks, only to be set on his feet and patted, roughly, on the helm. He grumbles. The captain doesn’t even let him go all the way, still holding onto his scruff. 

“The _Lost Light_ ,” the captain drawls. “Captained by Megatron of Tarn and Thunderclash.” 

“I’ll call you whatever I damn well please, you little glitch! The only ship in the galaxy and you climb into the one with _Megatron_?!” 

Everyone’s staring again. Maybe his carrier _shouldn’t_ be yelling at him instead of talking to the captain? Except the last time he got caught sneaking around on someone else’s ship, the captain seemed more amused than scandalized when he did that. “Is that a big deal?” 

Matri makes a noise between scrap metal caught between two gears and a Racer revving their engine. Ignis can almost see him gripping the sides of his helm so hard the metal dents, the way his optics are flashing in frustration. “You’re gonna break a denta if you keep doing that,” he chides his creator. He’s already in trouble after all. Might as well really dig it in. 

“You’re grounded.” He hisses. “You’re grounded and you’re in so much trouble when we get back. I’ll have you cleaning out the holding tanks on our next ship, you hear me? Scrub them out top to bottom because _you are in that much trouble_.” 

“Does that mean I don’t have to wash the hull?” He grins roguishly at the speakers. He’d gotten in trouble last week for accidentally spacing Excelsior last week. 

Another gear-grinding noise. Someone snickers. “ _Lost Light_ , when can I expect you back at port to drop off my idiot mentoree?” 

“We’re not going back to Ceryllia VI,” Megatron rumbles. Ignis sees the comms officer and another mech exchange worrying looks. Someone pulls up what looks like a map on screen. Ignis traces the line threading between planets and feels his vents stall. Ceryllia is an island, a single red dot surrounded by grey figures. The next red one is systems away. His spark sinks to the bottom of his chamber. “Our next shore leave is scheduled for Lork. We’ll drop him off there and you can pick up your little ... miscreant.” 

“That’s four months travel!” Excelsior screeches. Ignis didn’t think his voice could go that high. 

“We don’t have enough energy in the quantum engines to make a jump to Ceryllia,” one of the bridge officers says, too low to be caught by the comms. “And if we do we’ll be set back by at least two months waiting for the engines to recharge. We’ll make to Lork in three.” 

Ignis knows what they’re going to do. He’s going to be stuck on a ship with a bunch of weirdos he doesn’t know for _months_ , waiting for his carrier to come get him. Alone, and in space, and ... Megatron shakes him a bit. “Stop that. We’ll put you in the brig and you’ll be dropped off on Lork in three months.” 

“You’re not dropping him anywhere Megatron! You’re bringing him back so I can wring his little neck for running off again!” There’s a loud banging sound, like his carrier’s hit something. Or flipped a table. He does that sometimes. “This is kidnapping!” 

“And he trespassed!” Megatron snarls. “This is entirely his fault, and he’s facing the consequences of his actions.” 

“Like you ever faced the consequences of yours!” 

“This conversation is over. Blaster, cut the line.” 

“But -” 

“Cut it.” 

“Matri!” Ignis yelps. He doesn’t receive an answer. Above his head, Megatron runs a hand over his face. 

“Your mentor has to be the second most irritatingly demanding mech in the universe,” he says. Ignis kicks him. 

“Turn the comms back on! Let me talk to Matri again!” He keeps kicking Megatron until the mech hauls him up, looking at him faceplate to faceplate. 

“You broke the law, little mech. You’ll be facing the consequences of your actions, now.” 

Someone grunts. “We can’t just stick the newspark in a box for a few months. It’s not like he did any real damage when he was wandering around.” Ignis turns bright, shiny optics on the mech. “Look, even Ultra Magnus is gonna tell you that if you want to punish him you’re going to have to give him a trial or something.” 

“A trial.” Ignis and Megatron speak in unison. As an afterthought Ignis tacks on “Jinx,” at the end. 

“I can live with a trial. Or, you know, not being stuck in a _box_ for three months while you kidnap me.” 

“It’s not kidnapping.” 

“It totally is.” 

“You’re not even a child!” Ignis crosses his arms. He’s not allowed to argue that fact. 

“Give me a job or something, then. Let me _do_ things! I can be useful. I’m an _engineer_. Just - not a box.” Plaintive, he tacks on “I just want to go be with my mentor again.” 

Megatron turns and drops him into someone’s arms. They’re a big mech, tall and purple with horns and weird, hollow cheeks like a skull, and immediately their arms tighten around him. When Ignis breathes in he can smell high end wax and old metal. “Take him to the brig.” 

\-- 

Rodimus almost screams when the comm cuts off. The dock official he’d been speaking to before the interruption stares at him. 

“I assume you have found your wayward offspring?” He trills. 

“Yeah. He’s -” The former Prime runs a hand over his helm. “Is there any way a non-member of the Federation can report an abduction?” He already knows the answer, of course. This isn’t the first time his bitlet’s gone off and gotten into trouble. The only people who helped mechanoids in this universe were mechanoids. “Nevermind. I need a ship.” 

“I have a list of ships to charter.” The organic’s carefully enunciated words grinds on Rodimus’ already limited patience. “But no one has reported a sale, unfortunately. I do _so_ apologize for the trouble.” He doesn’t sound sorry. He doesn’t sound anything but tired and out of patience. 

It’s only the last vestiges of civilization that Rodimus has doggedly clung to for decades that lets hum not punch the son of a glitch in the face. “That’s - fine. Fine.” He calls up a map of the city on his HUD, checks his credit account, and sighs. “I’ll just be going now.” 

Little known fact about mechs from Nyon - for them, crime does pay, and it pays well. 

It looks like he’s going to be relieving some poor mech of their transport. 

\--- 

Ignis chatters at the mech as he’s carried to the brig. Halfway there the ‘bot had tucked him under his arm, extremities dangling. He didn’t even say anything the entire time! It was the most irritating trip of the mechlet’s entire life. 

Then he was all but chucked into a cell and told to ‘stay put’. Which he totally would, at least until someone decided to let him out or he got too bored. 

Almost immediately the lack of anything to do swamps his processor with dreaded boredom. He hates being bored, but it’s not like he hasn’t had to deal with being sat in a corner and told to sit still and not touch anything before. Or like this is his first time in a cell, though he doesn’t actually like admitting to that. 

People get weird when they know you have a criminal record as long as your arm.

For a second he thinks about pulling something out of his subspace to play with, or from under one of his armour plates, but he doesn’t want them to figure out he’s carrying anything or that they’d forgotten to search him yet. Besides, he actually has a fidgety habit he likes. Mostly because Excelsior hates it, but still! 

Under the dim glow of the brig lights he stretches out one arm, twisting it to examine the plates for paint imperfections. 

After only a few hours the temp paint that his carrier likes to slop on him before shore leave starts to peal. If he moves around a lot, or there’s a lot of sunlight, it gets even worse, the colors leeching away and the texture turning chalky and rough. Already the paint’s begun to bubble up and separate from the primer beneath. 

He picks at a larger bubble, pinches it between two fingers, and starts to peel the paint off in long strips. It’s almost like a game, seeing how much he can peel off at once. In some small areas, he can pull up an entire plate’s worth at once. It makes him feel really accomplished. 

It’s enough to amuse him for a few hours, and he amasses more than a small pile of dried paint next to him. 

He’s started to blindly pull the stuff off his helm - and it must have been hours since they stuffed him in the cell, since the paint’s begun to slough off like it’s supposed to - before a stuffy red and blue mech comes to pick him up. “... That is disgusting.” He mutters. Ignis shoves the paint into his subspace. 

“It’s not. You’re just sensitive or something.” Really. It isn’t like it’s organic skin or anything. Even then snake skin is the coolest thing _ever_ , so it’s not even like that’s really gross, either. 

The mech grunts. “Follow me,” he says. “The captains decided that you should work your sentence off.” 

“Sentence?” Ignis trots after the mech, unused to his long strides. His carrier, while twice his size, always made sure to walk slow enough that he could keep up. This mech isn’t nearly as polite. 

“It was determined that, while you were indeed trespassing, there was no basis for accusing you of spywork. The normal sentence for stowing away on a ship such as the _Lost Light_ is taking on the responsibilities of a member of the crew, as to pay off the passage of their trip.” He doesn’t look at Ignis when he speaks. 

“Don’t I get to speak at my own trial?” 

“This was a civilian tribunal, not a court of law.” The dour mech says. They’ve walked a fair distance already, and Ignis isn’t proud to say he’s already lost. _Exactly how large is this ship?_ he wonders. 

“So that means I don’t get to mount my own defense?” He complains. “That doesn’t sound very democratic.” 

“That is not how you use that word,” the mech corrects him. 

“It totally is!” 

“Democracy is a mode of government wherein the subjects of said government vote on matters of government -” 

“But it’s also the name of the coded set of ideals of a number of nations, which includes the right to speak at one’s trial! It’s part of the determining factors of what makes something a true democracy, as the meaning ‘belonging to the people’ - the right of litigious defense is considered tantamount!” He keeps babbling as they walk, scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the little he actually knows about democracy. 

Bouncing from ship to ship doesn’t leave a lot in the way of opportunities for steady education. Most of what he knows he’s learned from crewmembers on the fly, or from his carrier, and none of it formal. 

His carrier used to read to him stories of alien revolutions before bed, voice low and soft, and he knows what he’s talking about. 

“The Federation even marks it as one of their tenants of democracy!” He points at the ceiling. 

“Language should be precise,” he counters, “When naming a mode of government then one should mean the universal definition, not the social construct put forth by a single entity.” 

“But if you use that, then governments who claim the banner of democracy but whose people are only free by the technicality of the strictest sense - like Inglonkws, whose people vote for their leaders but who can be put in jail on a whim and who can’t do bunches of things because the law says they can’t, and because of corruption and stuff they aren’t really _free_!” 

“But then that government is not a democracy, is it? Because it does not belong to the people.” 

Ignis huffs. “Touche, mech.” They walk into a round room. The grumpy red mech he’d watched what felt like hours ago is washing something in a sink. The other red and white mech is watching him with fond optics, perched on an empty berth. 

“This is the medbay,” his keeper says, conversation obviously drawn to a close. “You’ll be spending the next three months working for Ratchet.” 

The grumpy one snarls, turning on heel to bare his denta at Ignis. “And I didn’t damn well sign up for this, kid, so you’d better suck it up and not complain. I don’t want to be here either.” 

Blandly, the blue and red mech tacks on, “He is commonly known as the Hatchet.” 

“... _Awesome._ ” 

\-- 

_Nyon_

Mechlets and newsparks watch from the sidelines as their creators chase tail lights through the dark, breathing in the scent of hot metal and exhaust. 

Hot Rod watches the practice entranced, perched on the shoulders of an older sparkling to watch the roar of the trick riders as they pull into the cavern. As they pass the invisible barrier of the cavern’s entrance they break apart in a flurry of transformations. The pinprick lights strung along the cavern’s roof do not glint off shined plating but scatter across matte paint, outlining soft shapes in rainbow shades. The glowpaint patterns they’ve streaked across their painting lights up the world on its own.

Engines roar. Mechs dance through scrap-metal and broken concrete obstacles, constructs built by Archivers in off hours. They have to rely on instinct alone, the noise and the way their biolights reflect on them to guide them through at racing speed. 

Hot Rod watches, dirt filmed optics over bright, and sees his future. Little fingers twitch and curl into the armour of the mechlet he’s perched on. Watching the racers, he can almost forget the low fuel warnings on his HUD and the ache in his tank, the grit in his joints and the oil slick on his plating from the aboveground. 

“That’s gonna to be us one day,” one of them says. A teek of his field tells Hot Rod that it’s Skidmark, a mech so spindly and thin plated someone could probably break him in half with a shove. 

He nods, captivated. There’s hundreds of them pouring through the cavern, and only space enough for a dozen to move at a time. This is only training. “We’re going to be amazing.” He grins at his fellow gutterslum. 

Then someone screams!

There’s a crash, the heavy, wet feeling of energon hitting his plating, splattering in fat drops across his faceplates. He laps it up with a long, prehensile glossa, tasting grit and dirt and half-processed energon. 

The scrap-medic they have on the tunnel tracks, little more than a relinquishment specialist, dodges between racers that haven’t even stopped to examine the ‘bot who’d twisted himself up in a set of rebars. There’s no time to stop for someone everyone already knows is offlined. 

Just about nothing can hit anything going as fast as he was and survive. 

Beneath the warm rumble of tuned engines Hot Rod can hear him screaming. Can hear him when he stops, too. 

Energon still coats the inside of his mouth. He thinks of the frame on the track, cooling, energon congealing, metal pinging. Acidic pre-digestive fills his mouth. Protocols, lines of code that usually sit in the back of his processor like a starved turbofox, key online. He can hear the whine of other mechlet’s motors coming online, and he can teek the starved intent in their fields. 

The training cavern empties, and the mechlets fall upon their dinner.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 

“First things first,” the Hatchet says, “I need a baseline for our records. Then you’re going to be doing inventory, because any glitch with basic computational skill can do that.” 

Ignis frowns. “How’re you gonna do that?” He asks. “Get my baseline?” 

The medic looks at him strangely. He pauses in his almost habitual scrubbing of his tools, setting aside one to look at him. “You ever have a check up by a medic, ‘bot?” There’s a dangerous rumble to his voice. 

He thinks about it. Excelsior has let tons of organic engineers look at him, so that crewmates could fix him if he got damaged doing something, and he knows one time when he was really little he’d gotten scanned by a non-Cybertronian mechanoid because he fueled on highgrade. Mostly his carrier fixed both of them up himself, though, unless they were really messed up, and then he had some of the crew do it. But that’s rare. 

“I don’t... think so?” He hazards. 

The medic’s engine grumbles. “We’ll do that now, then. Better not put it off longer than it’s already been. Why’d your aft for brains mentor _not_ drag you to a medic for regular check ins? Who even knows how screwed your systems are...” He keeps muttering to himself even as he leads Ignis to a berth, nudging over a stepping stool so he can climb onto it himself. Up on the berth he can see the tops of counters, covered in tools, and realizes that he’s almost optic-level with the staring white swords mech. 

“My mentor,” the word is both familiar and strange to him, an address used around strangers, “Doesn’t trust anyone, let alone other Cybertronians.” He kicks his legs, leaning his weight on his palms as he watches the white ‘bot watch him. “I don’t think he ever trusted one to look at him, either.” Knows it, actually. 

The medic taps the covered ports on his arms. He has a datapad in his hand, unwinding the aux cord attached to its top. “This is going to read your code for any error warnings your systems would have generated.” Ratchet says. “It’ll also give me a summary of your average system usage so my records have a set parameter to work off of for the future.” It takes a moment for Ignis to find the right code in his processor to pop the covers off, but he does, and the medic plugs in. 

He can feel it breaking down his firewalls. Not invasively, like he’s been hacked, but like they’ve been designed with this touch in mind; it slicks across his code like a ghost and makes him shudder. “I don’t like this,” he whines. 

“Tough luck.” 

The white mech is still staring at him. Ignis squirms, dislike the entire situation as he feels his systems disgorge information for the ‘pad. He knows that it’s not touching his processor, but the unease the possibility fills him with makes sitting and allowing this harder. “Who’re you?” He asks the staring ‘bot. “I don’t like you looking at me.” 

The mech grunts. Ignis watches the way he pets the hilts of the swords magnetized to his hips and listens to the medic grumble, and decides that working in the medbay is probably going to be the worst job ever. “You’re weird.” 

“You’re stranger than I am, newspark.” The mech’s voice is pleasant and low, a soft rumble that Ignis likes. It makes his audials feel good. 

“Not a newspark,” he corrects him. “I’m forty!” 

Ratchet snorts. “You act brattier than most of the mechs on board.” 

“I’m a free spirit,” Ignis sniffs. “I can’t help it if no one else recognizes that.” He kicks his feet, and notices that the tips of his peds are bright yellow again. Between the brig and the medbay the primer had worn away, his original paint two bright tips on his pronged peds. A quick twist of his body, ignoring the way Ratchet swats the back of his helm, shows that the primer’s wearing away at almost all of his major seams and joints. 

He can’t remember the last time he’s worn his real paint job - it might have been never, knowing his carrier - and a little thrill races up his backstrut at the thought of seeing what he really looks like under all the false paint. Matri has always been fastidious in keeping their true identities, whatever they might be, secret. 

There was a long time where Ignis was absolutely sure that Ignatius wasn’t even his real name. 

The datapad _pings!_. “Your nanites levels are too high,” Ratchet says. His engine grumbles in discontent. “But it’s not your self-repair. Your systems show signs of stress and lower capacity energy processing. Does your frame have trouble with highgrade?” 

Ignis tilts his head, shuffling his aft to the edge of the table to peer at the datapad. Lines of code scroll across the blue screen, and he can’t make heads or tails of it. “Does it says that I can’t? ‘Cause like, Matri says that it’s perfectly normal for a bot my age to have my energon pre-processed for me.” He taps yellow-edged fingertips on red-edged thighs, thinking. “I eat a lot of oil-shale and stuff, too. It’s probably nanites cleaning out my tank and building up my plates and stuff.” He glances nervously at the swordsmech. “I don’t drink highgrade. Matri says it’s bad for me to get overcharged.” 

More than that. Once, when he was still little, Matri had taken him to a bar. He’d gotten a drink, and then turned to talk to someone. Ignis had crawled out of his arms and onto the counter, and he’d been hungry and curious enough to stick his head in the colorful energon and guzzle it down. 

Excelsior had _freaked out_ , shoved his fingers down his throat until Ignis purged all over the bar counter. That was the first time he’d been taken to a mechanoid doctor, curled up in his carrier’s palm and keening from the way his tank burned from the energon, and the last time his carrier had let him anywhere near his drinks. 

The medic grunts, clearly disbelieving. Ignis sighs. “Are you done yet? You just needed my whats-it baseline, right? I mean, I’ve been doing fine so far so nothing should be the problem.” 

He gets the evil optic in response. Behind the medic, the swordsmech snickers. “The ‘pad says you’re within reported norms for your frame, but I want to run more tests. If this is your average I need to know why.” 

Groaning, Ignis whines, “Whhhy? It’s not like it matters! I’m only here until you reach Lork anyhow.” He squirms on the examination berth. The primer is starting to itch, now. He wants grab a wash and scrub off the rest of it, but he can’t even think about doing that until the medic lets him go. 

“You’re part of our crew, you’re under my care. No exceptions.” He’s unhooking the datapad when the door to the medbay opens. Ignis and the swordsmech jerk their helms to look at the intruder. It’s a blue ‘bot, tall and curvy. The first thing Ignis really notices about her is the way her mouth is painted dark blue, and the way the light curves off her paint. It’s pretty. 

The first thing he sees her do is fumble the ‘pads she’s carrying. Then a grin spreads across those blue lips, and her optics light up, and she says, “Wow! When’d we pick up a sparkling?” 

“I’m not a sparkling!” 

“What?” Ratchet looks at her like she’s crazy. “Did you eat something Brainstorm gave you again? Do I need to flush your tanks?” 

“What? No.” She tosses her stack of datapads on a desk and trots up to them. “I mean you’ve got a sparkling on your berth! I haven’t seen one since Caminus, you know. I didn’t know any Cybertronians had kindled since the war started, no one’s mentioned any!” 

“You know about kindling?” Ignis tilts his head. 

“Kindling?” Ratchet butts in. 

“Who doesn’t?” 

“Well, _anyone_ , least according to Matri -” 

“Would somemech _please_ explain what the frag you glitches are talking about?!” Ratchet throws a wrench. It bounces off the blue ‘bots head with a hollow _clang_. 

The bitlet winces as the femme rubs her helm. “Well,” he starts, and then bites his bottom lip. “Weeeell...” He rubs his knuckles along the side of his jaw. Primer flakes off his fingers and onto the lap. “Um. Wow. Okay, so you know how organics have babies?” 

“Yes.” His plating shivers in disgust. “Unfortunately, too well.” 

“Well, when two Cybertronians love each other very much, and they don’t have energy sinks in their chambers, then a spark forms like an organic baby. And that spark became a tiny me!” As far as he understands it, anyways. “It’s very important that you love each other before you try to make a new spark.” When he’d asked his carrier, he got really squirrely and then he told Ignis a long winded story and that was what he took away from it, anyways. Love was very important and apparently when you love someone an Ignis is born. Or something. 

The blue medic laughs. “Not quite, sparkling.” She runs a hand down his backstrut. “I’m Velocity.” 

“Hi, Velocity.” He shuffles away from her hand, aft half off the berth now. The tips of his toes are still nearly a meter off the ground. “Can you tell him I’m done now? Since his ‘pad already recorded all my stuff.” 

Ratchet makes a noise like a dying mothmet. “That doesn’t explain anything, you know.” He runs a hand down his faceplates hard enough to leave red paint transfers on the tip of his nose. “That’s - it’s impossible. I know it is.” 

Velocity and Ignis exchange glances, one curious and another pointedly not. “I told you so,” Ignis mutters. “Matri said that everyone on Cybertron was made to forget ‘cause of the government.” 

“But you don’t just forget something like that!” Her voice, Ignis notes with a wince, can get really, really high. 

“You do when you can’t no more.” He rubs his jaw harder. “I don’t know the whole thing, ‘cause Matri said I’d get to know when I was older, but he said that Cybertron all forgot almost everything a long, long time ago, ‘cept the deepest darkest parts, where people didn’t really go.” He stares at the swordsmech, who stares back at him. “Cause they were trying to control people. And they could pluck sparks from the ground full-grown already, instead of waiting centuries for us to grow up.” 

A servo cups the back of his helm. “On Caminus, sparklings are normal. Cybertron really doesn’t kindle mechs anymore?” 

Ratchet’s optics are stress-white and wide. His servos have a fine tremor running through them, Ignis notices, and he feels vaguely guilty for causing it. _I guess this is why Matri said not to tell anyone..._ “Velocity, I need all your files on kindling. Now!” 

Everyone in the room jumps at his shout. Velocity scrambles to find an empty datapad. Both medics distracted, Ignis slips off the berth. “I think they’re going to be busy for a while,” he says to the swordsmech. 

“I’m not surprised.” The mech’s optics are a very pale yellow, and he’s trembling, too. Ignis presses his palm to the mech’s hip, worried. 

“Are you okay?” A hand lands on his helm. 

“Yes, little one. I’m ... Yes.” Fingers scratch behind the helm protrusions on his cheeks, and Ignis purrs at the touch. His carrier does the same thing. “...I do believe you’ve thrown quite the wrench in this ship’s workings.” 

They watch the medics scream at each other. Every time Ratchet hears something he doesn’t like he throws whatever’s nearest at Velocity, who’s getting quite good at dodging now that she’s had time to warm up. Every time he says something she considers stupid she starts waving a datapad around. “They’re noisy.” 

“Well, two of us have had our most basic assumptions of our species proven wrong today.” 

“...Oh. Right.” Ignis sighs. “I’m hungry.” 

The swordsmech moves his servo from his helm to his shoulder. “C’mon, I’ll show you the way to Swerve’s.” 

“Do they have oil shale cakes?” 

“You’ll have to ask.” The medics don’t notice them leave. “I’m Drift by the way.” Ignis leans his weight against him as they walk down the hall. 

“Nice to meet you. I’m Ignis.” 

“I know.” He sounds amused. 

“I just wanted to make sure.” 

\--

 

Swerve’s is loud and filled with mechs already well on their way to overcharge. When they walk in Ignis drifts farther away from the swordsmech, curious over the huge, towering mechs around them. Almost immediately he’s pulled back by his scruffbar to stand next to the mech. “Stand close to me,” he’s told, and then a moment later pulled up into white arms. “Never mind, this is easier.” 

“This is ignominious!” 

“Oooh, five shanix word.” The bartender, a short mech the same colors as Ratchet, sniggers. “Fine day we’re having, right? I got some good stuff on shore leave, it’s the special - Beryllium Bites, you should try some - you want an order of that with your energon? Free order for a fellow minibot! It’s ‘cause I’m nice like that, mech, and it’s always nice to have a fellow mini on board.” He grins at them both. 

“Wow,” Ignis mutters, settling on Drift’s lap as he sits on a barstool. “You talk a lot.” He twists and twitches until he’s comfortable, aft balanced on one thigh and the bottom edge of his spoiler resting on the arm supporting his back. He’s not stingy with his elbows either, forcing the mech’s arms into just the right configuration for him, shoving his legs apart just enough so that he can hook his pedtips under the mech’s lower legs for balance. “You should buy me an oil cake for manhandling me, mech. I’m not a pet.” 

Drift pinches his cheek finial hard enough to dent the delicate metal, ignoring Ignis’ yelp. “Ask, mech.” 

“Fiiiiine, barman,” he turns a wide, innocent expression on Swerve. It’s a carefully cultivated mix of sweet orphan and hungry organic bitlet, all shiny wide optics and sweetly pouting mouth, and asks, “Can I get a oil cake and a cup of midgrade please?” He uses his sweetest voice, pitched just a bit higher than his normal one. 

They both stare at him. His sweet expression breaks away into barely-contained sniggering, hands slapped over his mouth as if to contain the burbling noise. “Weeeell?” He drawls, absolutely delighted. 

“Don’t do that again.” Drift chucks him gently under the chin. “It was creepy.” 

“You’re creepy,” Ignis pouts. The bartender only laughs as he slides a basket of silvery-grey biscuits towards them. 

“If you want that to be convincing, mech, you’ve gotta get your field under control. There’s nothing stranger than looking at a mech with an angry face and a happy field, or vice versa. You’re basically an open book.” 

Ignis nods along, reaching out to snag a beryllium biscuit. He shoves it in his mouth, careful to keep his fingertips free of the pre-digestive fluids already flooding his oral cavity. The biscuit is crumbly and sweet, quickly dissolved into slag in his mouth, slipping down his throat like syrup. It seeps out the corners of his mouth, two long trails of silver that form drips and fall to Drift’s thigh. He swallows, long prehensile tongue licking up the stray drops from his face. More pre-digestive fluids help clean the last traces of it from his mouth, swallowing the beryllium rendered a thin liquid by his saliva. 

The two mechs are staring. So is most of the bartop, actually, eight or so mechs who’re looking at him like he’s crazy. “What?” He mutters, orange faceplate flushing with heat. He reaches for another biscuit hesitantly. 

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen beryllium biscuits do that,” the bartender says. “They’re not _supposed_ to do that, actually.” 

Ignis swallows his mouthful of slag, then opens his mouth wide. Stray pre-digestive fluids drip out of his mouth, activated by his oral chemical receptors detecting fuel, and onto the bartop. Even diluted by liquified biscuits, the fluids quickly break down the metal of the bar. “It’s like saliva,” he says with a grin. “‘Cept it’s acidic. Matri said it’s for breaking down metals easier since I need to eat them for my frame.” 

A faceless helicopter-former sniggers. “Betcha you could eat a mech with that stuff,” he says. He’s got a collection of cups and curly straws around him, sweet orange engex puddled where they’ve fallen over. 

Ignis definitely wants a curly straw with his cube. “Well, yeah,” he says, “Can I have a curly straw in my cup?” 

He’s absently passed a cup with long curly straw in it, which he sticks the end of delightedly in his mouth. It doesn’t melt, but only because Ignis is careful to keep the end between his lip plates and out of his mouth. 

“...What?” Something breaks when the ‘copter jerks his claws across the bar as he stands. “You _eat_ people?” Even Drift is suddenly stiff beneath him. 

Ignis shrugs. _People get so weird when you talk about cannibalism_ , he thinks, _I guess they’re not that different from organics after all._

It’s weird to think about. Matri was never squeamish about it, after all. Maybe he and Matri are the weird ones, and not all those organics? He huffs. “No,” he lies. “Of course not. We’re not vampires or anything.” He slurps up more energon. “Eating people is wrong.” Which is it. 

Ignis isn’t going to explain to any of them that, without a spark, frames aren’t people. He doesn’t think it would go over very well. 

The ‘copter sniggers. “Suuuure,” he drawls, and then leans heavily on Drift’s shoulder. “Heeeey, you look like a bot I knew! Nice guy. Kind of an aft. Can’t remember his name.” His frame stinks of ozone and engex, a comforting smell to Ignis. His own carrier comes to the berth often enough smelling of the same, though his usually includes ash and cheap wax in the mix. Swerve’s must carry Excelsior’s favorite brand of engex. 

“I don’t know who that is. I’m Ignis. Who’re you?” He leans towards the ‘copter. Matri always said in his stories that ‘copters are crazy. Ignis kind of wants to test that. 

For science, of course. He’s an engineer, after all. 

Drift pushes the ‘copter’s face away, hard enough to send the drunk mech stumbling. “That is a bad influence, Ignis, and one you’d do well to stay away from.”

He grunts and sucks down a forth of his cup of fuel. Despite the size of his frame, slightly smaller than the average minibot, he takes in and uses almost three times the amount of energy a full-sized racecar would be expected to use. His morning ration had been cut short by their landing, and his midday one had been entirely ignored due to accidental kidnapping, leaving him with low-fuel warnings blinking in the corner of his HUD all day. Fuel finally hitting an empty tank feels good. 

“Don’t drink it too fast!” The barmech warns, “Don’t want you getting a buzz now do we? Not when you’ve just got on board, nomech wants the second thing the Magnus does to be putting you back in the brig for wandering around overcharged.” 

“I’m already going back to the brig.” He sucks down energon until the straw makes an odd, horrible sucking noise against the bottom of the empty cup. “And I’m high energy,” or lower efficiency, actually, “I need like three cubes a day just to keep my systems acting normal.” He holds the cup close to his chest and watches the rest of the room. There’s another minibot in the bar, accompanied by a purple mech with horns. The same one who’d taken him to the brig! “Small ship,” he mutters around his straw. 

He leans heavily against Drift’s arm, looking around the bar now that he has something in his tank. The biscuits earlier filled him up pretty well, and he doesn’t like the feeling of a full tank anyways. Maybe he’ll ask for another cup of energon in a bit, but he’s okay for now. There are more bots coming in now, like a shift change has taken place or something, except on a smaller scale. Less a rush and more a small surge of bots, in bar terms. Or, well, probably bar terms. It sounds right to Ignis anyways. 

Drift frowns and sips his own midgrade. “You should get your systems checked out by Velocity,” he says, “That can’t be good for you.” 

“It’s... bit stuff.” He shrugs. “I do a lot of stuff that expends energy.” He glancing up at his empty basket. “Can I get an oil cake now?” 

Oil wouldn’t fill him as much as energon would, and he’s used to burning off the less than clean fuel more than he is normal energon. Plus oil cakes test like the best thing ever, of all time. “No.” Drift grumbles, “You spilled on me.” 

“Then you shouldn’t be holding me in your lap in the first place.” He kicks his legs out, huffing through all his fans at once to make a gusty sound. “I’mma get one anyways. I have credits!” He holds his cup in one hand as he reaches into his subspace to pull out a credit chip. Slapping it onto the counter, he grins. “See!” 

Swerve snickers as he passes over an oil cake. “Sure, mech. Just be sure you don’t spill on your seat again or you might get a sword to the aft.” 

“Whatever.” He trades his cup for the cake, sure he can’t steal it with the attention he’s garnered. Carefully, he nibbles around the edges, savoring the taste. 

He’s split his attention between his cake and the door when a squeal rips through the room. Ignis is so startled by the noise he drops it, and thick oily cake lands in his lap, slips between his thighs, and is smeared across Drift’s plating before falling to the floor. “Aaaw...” He grumbles. “I paid for that.” 

Pulling out a cleaning rag, he’s doubly startled when arms wrap around him, under his armpits and across his chest. “Look at this!” A female voice croons, “Who’s bitty bot are you, now?” 

Ignis grunts and squirms, legs kicking back as she steals him out of Drift’s arms. “What the holy fragatron! Lemme down!” 

“Language, bitty bot!” The person holding him cides. Someone snickers. He crosses his arms, legs hanging, and go utterly limp. 

“Let me down,” he grumbles. “I’m not a pet.” One arm wraps like a steel band around his chest and a hand pets his head. 

“But you’re so cute! I haven’t seen a youngling like you since I left Caminus, you know. I didn’t think there were any wandering around! Did you come in with a new crewmember when we landed?” 

Ignis glares at Drift, silently begging the bot to save him. He just laughs and cleans the oil off his legs. “Fragger,” he grumbles. Then, louder, “Let me down you crazy lady. I’ve got things to do!” He tries kicking again, but she just holds him closer to her chassis, field enveloping him. 

“But you’re so cute!” A finger pinches his cheek. Lighting fast he twists his neck and latches sharp denta around the metal, biting down lightly in warning. The tips of his teeth sink just barely into her plating, but he’s practiced enough - and of enough of a mind - not to lathe his tongue over the metal, which prevents it from melting. He releases her before his mouth begins to produce pre-digestive fluids, saving her a trip to the medbay. 

“Don’t do that again,” he hisses. Someone smacks the back of his head.

“Hey! Don’t bite her!” Whipping his head around, Ignis glares at the flier suddenly in his space. “Nautica, are you okay?” He licks up the shining traces of half-processed energon on his lips. It tastes better than the midgrade he’d just had, and he’s filled with a sudden, wrenching desire to be back in his carrier’s lap, suckling energon from his fingers. It’s been years since he was small enough to do that, though. 

“I’m fine!” Nautica insists. She’s still holding him. “I should really know better by now than to put my hand near a youngling’s face, but you know me!” She laughs. 

_Save meeeee_ , Ignis mouths at Drift. The fragger just shakes his head. 

Fragger. 

“If I say I’m sorry will you let me down?” He whines. The blue flier keeps glaring at him. He sticks his tongue out at him, because even if he is one of the faceless ones, which makes Ignis want to like him on sheer principle, he’s not helping. Then he wiggles a bit. At least when he’s being carried around by his scruff bar he doesn’t feel like such a baby. Being carried like this only happened when someone wanted to treat him like a _kid_. 

The flyer runs his knuckles over Ignis’ helmvent roughly. White primer flakes off to reveal teal paint. “I think I should keep you right where you are,” he says with a mean look in his optics. Then he wiggles his fingers in front of his face, just out of reach. “Can we keep it Drift? I’ve always wanted a feral minibot for a pet!” 

“Not feral!” He snipes. 

Nautica laughs. “Brainstorm, we can’t keep a youngling. I didn’t know you were the creating sort, but anyways, we can’t! He has to go home to his creators, now, doesn’t he?” She pinches his cheek. He hisses at her. “Yes he does! You can’t be more than, what, sixty?” 

Not even fifty, but he wasn’t going to tell _her_ that. “Not a youngling,” he gripes, yanking at her arm. 

He wishes, for once, that he was _bigger_ than the people around him. He’d forgotten how much slag it sucked to be small. “You’re adorable,” she sighs, and sets him on his peds. “Where’s your creators?” She makes a show of looking around. 

Ignis kicks Drifts leg and scowls. “On Cyrellia,” he says. Then he tilts his head, looking up to regard the flyer with wide blue eyes. “Are you really Brainstorm? You don’t seem like _the_ Brainstorm.” 

Worried hands pet his helm and down his shoulders, before Drift and Nautica start comming each other. 

“Brainstorm!” The flyer says gregariously, “‘Course I’m Brainstorm! Smartest ‘bot in the universe here!” 

“Matri says you’re the most dangerous, reckless, crazy bot in the whole wide ‘verse.” He grins, optics squinting up, baring a mouthful of fangs. “He said I was just like you!” Someone groans. Another laughs. He rests his fists on his hips and sizes up the flier for real. “I’m an engineer too, you know!” 

“Are you now?” Brainstorm purrs, powerful flight engine adding a subsonic hum to his words. “Hey, newspark, you wanna head back to my lab and show me what you can do?” They both glance back at their respective babysitters, both distracted by rapid fire comms. “C’mon, before they notice we’re gone.” The flier turns to leave, and the bitlet goes with him. “Nautica is going to kill me for corrupting a newframe.” Ignis doesn’t correct him on his terminology. After all, it’s not like he _knows_ , not like the Caminusians. Camians? Caminians? 

He’s just so _happy_ , after all. 

“Let’s go blow something up!” Ignis cheers. 

Well, it might be for his sake, too. After all, no one else would let him commit a .5 on the Brainstorm Scale with them!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to Rodimus, Ignis is regularly a .4 on the Brainstorm Scale. Because telling your bitlet about the most dangerous 'bots in the galaxy (ie the ones that make the best bedtime stories) is good sense. 
> 
> Unbetaed, will probably go back and edit/add things tomorrow.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4 

 

The tunnels are quiet, this early in the orn. There is no light to tell the time by, but Hot Rod’s chronometer tracks it well enough. Even if it couldn’t the racers had only recently returned below ground to sleep and add the bulk of their winnings to the communal pot, which means that it couldn’t be far past the start of first shift above ground. 

He should be sleeping, but he finds himself restless. The news that the Racers have brought home again, datapads clenched in uneasy hands and passed along to curious archivers, makes his tank twist in worry. Restless energy fills his frame, words from revolutionaries alight behind his optics. Forbidden things, revolutions. History well-recorded tells him what comes of them. 

In the dark his peds sound too loud. It doesn’t bother him, because the sound of his engine is almost louder, and he’s unused to quiet of any sort. He’s in one of the arterial tunnels, only just far enough from the main encampment that he can’t hear the other younglings. Almost everyone is recharging after greeting the returning Racers. 

Down one of the capillary tunnels he sees the first glimmers of light. Curiosity has him following it. The archive levels are below this one, which has been sectioned off for racing and habitation since long before even Hot Rod’s great-grandcreators were bitlets. He’d have to go down several more tunnels and an open air elevator shaft before he’d reach any of the true archives. 

Beyond the first shallow curve of the capillary, metal walls give way to concentric circles of glowpaint glyphs, overlapping each other in dizzying patterns. They swirl over metal walls, reaching above his head, and if he lowers his optics’ feed by thirty percent he can make out of the lace-like pattern they form. It’s nearly exactly like the archives below him, except that the entry on the nearest wall, whose white glowpaint stands out in stark contrast again wallmates of deep blue, burnt orange, and several shades of green, is bad poetry. 

He snickers when he reads it, because it’s really just that bad. 

“What is this place?” He asks empty air. It’s not empty, he knows, because he can feel a field testing the edges of his own. Out of sight, around the next bend of a tunnel only twice the width of his arm length and less that in height, someone laughs. 

“You found it a little early,” they say, “But it’s a place for the older bits to hang.” A mech walks into view. They’re small for a Racer, especially a Nyan one, and he can’t tell the color of their plates under all the glowpaint smeared across it. His eyes are two gold embers in the dark. “Though most of us are archivers.” 

Hot Rod wrinkles his nasal ridge. He’s always dreamed of being a Racer, is too in love with the feeling of air streaking over his plating and the hot hum of his engine as he pushes himself nearly past his limit, to even give passing thought to anything else. Archiving especially irks him. History is important, the most important thing to the tunnel dwellers, but there’s a difference between finding it and recording it. One of those is boring.

Secretly he’s always wanted to _make_ it, too, even if he knows he’s not supposed to. 

“You want to sit in the dark and write on walls the rest of your functioning?” He asks in childish curiosity. Idle fingers run over the wall and long-dried paint. The poem beneath the white one is faded, weathered, carved into the metal. It’s so old Hot Rod can’t even read the dialect anymore. So old the light from the paint has long gone out and the words are only lit because someone has traces over them again in an attempt to preserve even this, the love-addled glyphs of a mechlet. 

“Yes.” He doesn’t even sound offended. A proper brush of their fields reveals to Hot Rod his identity. There are only four hundred mechs who live in the tunnels, and he knows all of them by field if not by sight. 

“Why?” He asks Derby, a mech he knows is fast and sleek and graceful on the track. Fuzzy memories tell him that he used to watch him during the trick practices, and he’d been _good_. “Racing is better. It’s...” He doesn’t know how to put the feelings in his spark to words. It’s something grand and swollen and vast in his head, feelings more than words because words are so _limiting_. “It’s the best.” 

A soft hand settles on his shoulder, and then another chucks him under the chin. He can feel the paint it leaves on his finish, slightly damp. “That’s what you think, little one. Maybe, for you, it’s even true.” The hand on his shoulder moves down to rest at the top of his back, and his field is soft and warm. “Here, I want to show you something. One of you brought back a ‘pad of works by a miner from Messetine. Have you heard it?” Hot Rod nods. “I want to show you what I’ve done with it, then. You can read it and tell me what you think.” 

Hot Rod doesn’t add _I only read it ‘cause I didn’t have anything else to do_ , but only because he’s sure that he’d be caught out in the half lie. It’d started that way, but the words... they were good words. The best words, the kind that made his spark sing. 

The tunnel is really long, but not so long that Hot Rod has a chance to get tired, and it branches occasionally, to tunnels likewise covered in more glowpaint. He doesn’t bother asking how the other younglings hadn’t found this place before. The tunnels are a maze even to those who online in them. 

He’s stopped at a section that was largely dull, dark colors. Derby had obviously only just finished his piece, wet paint glistening beneath the glow from the light of their optics. It’s a lacework of poems, circles around circles flowing into each other like the rounded cogs of a clock. He has to read it twice, then take it in all at once, to understand what he’s seeing. 

“These are Megatron’s works!” He crows, optics wide. They’ve been put together in a way he’s never seen before, the style unique to the tunnels and the ancients. Above grounders write in straight lines; the ‘bots who remember the old ways know better. Now he can see meanings he’d never connected before, ideas butting up against each other that seemed so different when rendered into separate pieces now drawing parallels together. 

It makes something click in his processor. He grins. “Cool!” He chirps. Derby laughs. 

“Well, I was hoping, you know, since no one’s taken on the task yet. If one of the archivers agree I’m going to move this to one of the archives. I’ve no doubt this mech is going to deserve a place in history, right bitlet?” 

“Definitely! No way they can say no to this!” His grin only widens. “It’s amazing.” 

“Doesn’t matter how cool it looks.” Derby chides him, but his field is flared wide with pride. “The archives are for history, not every day poets. He’s got to prove himself before he earns a place on those walls.” 

“So he’s just... here until he does that? Just the bitlets seeing this?” Scrunching up his orbital ridges, he mutters, “Doesn’t really seem fair.” He reaches out, fingers hovering just above the wet paint. He knows better than to touch it, though. “How’d you decide to put it like this, anyways? It’s like a puzzle, ‘cept I didn’t even see the pieces before you put them together.” 

A servo rests on the back of his neck, big and warm. “You got enough patience left in you to sit down for a bit and let me show you how?” 

Hot Rod tils his head, considering. “I might.”

\-- 

“Wash your hands before you come inside,” his carrier says. Solarflare smiles at his only creation, a young ‘bot by anyone’s standards for the job. Despite his youth he’s as warm and caring as any other Racer in the tunnels, all sharp points and shades-of-gold paint, sweet smiles and chiding pinches. 

Hot Rod looks at him, then looks down at his paint splattered paint in dismay. “But it’s going to take _foreeeever_ to clean off!” He whines. Sunsplash just points at the door. “Fine,” he pouts, and walks back out. 

They don’t have a washrack, since solvents are expensive and most of them reserved for the Racers, who need them to clean the grit of aboveground and their racing paint from their plating, but a reserve fitted with a pump and a collection of rags on the outside of their house, in a tiled square. Spilled solvents are drained back into a different reserve, where they’re filtered and cleaned and reused for different things. 

He pumps up enough to soak one of the cloths, and then starts scrubbing down his plating. Nyons prefer to be clean, but Racers more than most. There’s something about grit between fine seams that makes their protoform itch something awful, the feeling of dirt on their plating as the wind rushes over them that makes them cringe. Only the youths enjoy being dirty, collecting grime from exploring tunnels too small to bother cleaning and slapping each other with oil-discharge covered servos in dirty play fights. 

He uses the scrub brush when a spot of paint has dried thick and hard, picking at it with his claws when even that’s not enough. 

“You almost done?” Hot Rod jumps, startled, and the brush clatters to the tile floor. His carrier laughs, a low rolling sound, and leans down to pick it up. “Watch out, bit, I don’t want to have to pick up a replacement anytime soon.” A large, warm servo pinches the point of a chevron finial still being refined, then cups his cheek. “You going to sneak up and watch the races tonight?” 

He ducks his head. “No, carrier,” he mutters. Heat flush rises from his cheeks as his field flutters in rapid microbursts of embarrassment. “Who told?” Scrubbing at a particularly stubborn dribble of paint, he doesn’t look up, the question in every way nonchalant. 

Hot Rod is going to run them down and pound them into the pavement when he finds them. It’s only right. 

Solarflare whaps him upside the helm. “No. You don’t get to be angry. I _saw_ you up there.” He starts scrubbing Hot Rod’s backplates. “I’ve been letting it go because all you bitlets get it in your helms at least once, but I _can’t_ anymore. I can’t come home to see an empty berth, and I can’t race when I’m always searching to teek your field.” Bristles dig between plates, hard and not-quite painful. “You’re going to get caught, and then you’ll be experimented on and then you’ll be offlined, and where will I be?” 

“Sad,” Hot Rod says after a pause. “Scared?” He runs a clean, dry cloth over his leg plating. It’s softer than the washrags, but so old that when he holds it up he can see through it. “Because you’ll miss me.” 

“Because I love you.” The brush is traded for a wet cloth, moving in small circles. “Because you’re precious, little bit.” A warm nasal ridge bumps against his neck. His carrier’s field presses against him, filled with love and warmth. “So no going up to the surface again.” 

Hot Rod wants to yell, and fight, and scream. His engine rumbles and his field surges, threaded with want and childish rage. 

The surface fascinates him. 

Their words fascinates him. The hushed way the people slink through side streets and up alleys, muted paintjobs and scummy plating, optics slicing through the dark. None of them wear glowpaint on matte finishes, none of them slick through the air with kindled Racer’s grace, bulky and heavy and strange. They congregate in energon shops run dry, warehouses left abandoned, the places the Senate through neglect has taken from them, and they _speak_. 

He bites back what he wants to say - the words build up like static in his vocalizer, but he cuts off every command for it to online, deleting each thought tree as it diverts towards that. It’s better if his creator thinks he’s watching him race, after all. 

Listening to talk of rebellion and gladiators is far less acceptable. 

“Okay, carrier,” he grumbles finally. He picks up their half-empty tin of wax and hands it to Solarflare. “Can you get my back?” 

When his carrier leaves for the races that night, Hot Rod doesn’t even wait a full joor to follow. 

\-- 

Hot Rod holds the datapad close to his chest, mechlet frame blending in with the crowds. He’s not the only tunneler in the crowd, but he doesn’t search out his compatriots. Plausible deniability still stands between them and punishment, after all, as long as they don’t lay optics on each other. 

Inside the dingy energon shop dirty frames press close together. Hot Rod can smell the dingy smoke and factory stench that cleans to their frames, oily discharge, energon being processed. These are strangers and they make him hungry to think about. The mech of a few nights ago is long gone, and the energon his carrier brought home barely enough to feed him, let alone his bitlet. There’s only one winner in an illegal street race, and not enough races a night to support an entire underground colony. 

Hot Rod is always hungry. 

The room is small, cluttered by chairs. The bar’s to the left, shelves of engex gleaming but no energon to be found. This place is just another of them run dry in the last few years. The lights are low, just barely enough to see by, and obviously not running on electricity. Hot Rod wonders if someone’s imported more illegal Praxian crystals - it’s a common thing, if not the easiest of the contraband materials regularly ran through Nyon, cleaned, and then sent to other city-states - but the thought is relegated to a peripheral thought tree when a mech stands up on the bar. 

“My friends,” the mech says. His voice is a low rumble, and it makes Hot Rod’s very spark shiver. “We all know the truth! We all know why we gather here in the shadows like electrorats, too scared to force our way into the light! Our tanks are empty and our homes decaying, our streets dangerous and our hopes ground to dust!” The crowd cheers. “We’ve been long abandoned by a corrupt Senate!” 

They yell so loudly the floors shake and the windows rattle. Hot Rod can feel the strain of it in his vocalizer. 

“We refuse to slave away under the tyranny of a government who will grant us no freedom! No life!” He raises one fist, datapad in hand. Even from where he’s standing in the back of the room, Hot Rod can tell it’s one of Megatron’s work. It might even be _Towards Peace_ , even though it only reached Nyon a few cycles ago! 

More ‘bots are passing handfuls of cheap one-use dataslugs around. Even now, with the city gone to rust as it has, dataslugs are a credit a dozen. Not because they’re cheap - nothing in Nyon is really cheap anymore - but because in the shadow of the Apropoplex things like dataslugs being cheap _matters_. It’s also why just about everyone in the city can read, and anyone framed there definitely can, and why the underground thrives on things like Megatron’s writings. 

In Nyon, learning still matters. Even to abovegrounders. 

Hot Rod takes his slug and tucks in the subspace pocket nestled in his wrist. Harder to pickpocket that way, but necessarily smaller, it’s just large enough for one. 

“We will not be defined by our frames!” The mech continues. This isn’t a radical speech, just like every other one Hot Rod’s been to in the last few years, but it still makes something hot and heady and electric sit up in the back of his spark chamber. “A war is coming! A revolution! We will be free!” 

Their cheering is interrupted by the arrival of a canister of gas through one window. Someone screams, then more mechs. “Enforcers!” The speech maker scrambles off the bar. “Scatter! Don’t let them get their hands on the slugs!” 

They stampede, going every which way in their need to escape. The racecars are better off, leaping through windows or jumping the bar to get out the backdoor, powerful engines roaring as they shift into altmode and make off through the tangled streets of the city’s former industrial zone. 

“WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED,” someone says over a mic, static traced through a standard Enforcer vocalizer. “SURRENDER NOW.” 

No one even pauses. Hot Rod is carried away by the rush of people, small form crushed between them as they rush to and fro in search of escape. He can hear people yelling now, screaming, and frame-instinct tells him that people are dying. For a second he hesitates, ingrained habits telling him not to leave potential fuel and raw materials aboveground, before he acknowledges just how insane it would be to stop and eat. 

He still wants to do it. He just knows better. 

Twisting frantically between the crushing frame of a construction model and a truck, he drops down to ped level and looks between the collection of legs. Someone kicks him, knocking him over. Someone else steps on his thigh and the strut snaps with a sharp, metallic _crack_! He bites back a scream, curling up into a protective ball. Someone kicks him, and he goes flying, tumbling helm-over aft right into someone’s backstrut. 

He only hesitates a moment, caught up in fear and pain, before he uncurls and clings, spread eagle, to the mech’s back kibble. The tips of his blunting claws, whose newframe sharpness is wearing into midframe roundness, dig into thick plating. 

The truck bulldozes his way right through the wall with Hot Rod on his back, too terrified to invent. The crash of metal plating giving way jars him right down to his struts, and makes him screech in pain as his broken one is jostled. He’s hanging just by his arms now, field teeking of pain and misery as the bot just _keeps going_.

The energon shop was the last in a row in a small strip mall off the industrial areas of the city, meant for working bots to visit right before or after their shifts when they’re thinking of how to spend their shanix. When the city’d gone to rust the shops were closed down because no one had the shanix to buy anything anymore. Now it’s used mostly by the homeless, junkies, and Empties to take shelter in. It’d been part of the reason they’d decided to meet there - they’re a dime a dozen in this area. They never should have been found. 

Hot Rod isn’t thinking about any of this. His processors are swamped by pain and panic, and there’s room for little else. It’s all noise and movement and flashing lights to him. A jarring movement, and huge servos wrap around his ankle just long enough to toss him in the air. When he lands it’s in the bed of a truck and he _screams_ from the pain. 

It’s too much. The field against his teeks safety and warmth and frantic fear and he can’t take it. 

He passes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire fic is kind of a chronological mess and that's okay. One day I might even go back and fix that. 
> 
> One day. Not any time soon. 
> 
> Also! If anyone wants to know what Ignis looks like, I did a quick sketch of his helm: 
> 
> http://66.media.tumblr.com/ac72b77c34b7f9a3a17ea9c53a2e2913/tumblr_oc4remR4Vz1rk7pk6o1_1280.jpg


	5. Chapter 5

Brainstorm and Ignis walk into a lab whose main table is half-melted to slag, acid eating away at the lumpy mess that’s left. 

They pause at the door. Ignis cringes with guilt, but Brainstorm just sighs. “One of your earlier adventures?” He says blandly. Ignis shrugs. “Well! We’ll have to break into Perceptor’s lab and use his since you’ve slagged up most of my work materials. And then I’m making you clean up everything ‘cause I’m _definitely_ not doing it.” 

Groaning, Ignis admits, “I deserve that.” He looks forlornly at the melting mess. “I didn’t think it’d get that bad.” 

“Durillic acid’s powerful stuff.” A hand on his back leads Ignis back into the hall, where they walk another two doors down. Above the entrance there’s a sign that says “No Entrance to Brainstorm and Co.”, obviously handwritten on a piece of flimsy and taped there by someone thinking they were clever. Brainstorm snorts when he sees it. “Swerve’s work. You make one and you think you should make a hundred.” 

Ignis doesn’t get the joke, but he giggles anyways. He earns a light thwap on the back of his helm for that. “Hey, you’re still in trouble. No laughing or enjoying yourself until I say so.” He doesn’t say it harshly, though, so Ignis keeps smiling as the jet crouches in front of the access panel. 

“Are you a Seeker?” He asks as the scientist begins to systematically pull the door lock apart. 

“No. What makes you think I’m a Seeker? Do I look like one of those prissy afts?” He grunts as the panel zaps him. “Percy modified his lock. Why would he do that?” 

“‘Cause he doesn’t want you going in? And I heard that all flyers were Seekers, ‘cept you don’t have the big wide wedge wings like I’ve seen in the pictures.” 

“Where’d you see those? That sounds like an Earth-alt.” The panel zaps him again, this time so hard Ignis can see the bright flash of electricity arcing between his fingers. He clambers onto Brainstorm's back and leans over his shoulder to get a better look at the internals. 

“Matri showed me some. He liked to tell stories. You should cut the blue wire and attach it to the top of the yellow wire you already cut.” Brainstorm does. The door opens, and Ignis clings to his back as the flier stands. “If you’re not a Seeker what are you?” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He trots into the lap with a miniature Racer on his back, looking around to figure out exactly what his compatriot has been messing with lately. 

“I thought all fliers were either Seekers or Shuttles or Rotormechs." He rests his chin on the scientist’s shoulder, feet on the back of his skirt armor, servos clutching the tops of his wings. He tilts his head to rest his cheek against the barrel of a jutting gun barrel. “Just like all cars are Trucks or Cars or Motorcycles or Trains, and everything else is just a subset of one of those.” 

“That’s so completely wrong I’m sort of astonished.” He picks his way through the lab - seemingly set up to be deliberately hard to maneuver through with wings, which Ignis doesn’t think is a coincidence - and tries to explain to the bitlet exactly how wrong he is. “Seekers are just a subset of flier, not the other way around. Shuttles, too - spacefaring flier.” 

“Why? And I wanna make something explode. I don’t think this is the right lab for that.” 

“Because there are more fliers than just Seekers, and not all fliers have what makes a Seeker, but all Seekers have what makes a flier. So we say that Seekers are just Jets with fancy additions to their frames. And, kid, you can do science _anywhere_.” He picks through neat drawers and cubes of supplies. This lab is nothing like Brainstorm’s. It’s organized, neat, and nearly spartan in design. There are no wayward notes or half-built projects on the long tables, just neatly stored tools. 

Ignis likes Brainstorm’s lab more. “Who’s place are we crashing in anyways?” 

“Perceptor’s, _second_ smartest mech in the -” 

“Aren’t you two madly in love? Why are you stealing from him if you’re, like, gooshy with each other? Matri said that after you saved the universe from the Giant Purple Multiplying Griffins you fell so in love with each other that you bonded and lived happily ever after exploring the universe.” He says matter of factly, dutifully repeating what his carrier had told him as bedtimes stories when he was younger. His carrier had told him a lot of stories about Cybertronians, so that even if never met another of his own kind he’d know about them. 

He sputters and drops the spanner he was intent on smuggling out of the lab. “Frell did you hear that?!” He yelps, voice climbing several octaves in sheer surprise. 

Ignis shrugs. “Matri tells me bedtime stories.” He casually tilts himself over his shoulder to poke around in the drawer himself. “You guys have good tools. Matri said you guys got alien-married and that you live on a ship that’s exploring the whole wide universe so you can see if you can explode it and he can stop you, and that you shared True Love’s Kiss and that one time you traveled through time to save him and when you made alien arms dealers angry he shot all of them and it was really romantic, and -”

“Stop!” Brainstorm cries. Laughter hangs off his voice, brittle and weak as it is. “Okay, kid, I know what you’re saying now. And when I meet your mentor I’m - going to have words with him, is what I’m going to do. Not shoot him. Nope!” He steps away from the drawers, swinging Ignis over his shoulder and onto his peds in front of him. “Who’s he been telling these stories to again?” 

Ignis looks up at him, then starts squirming in his grip. “Everyone. People really like the griffin story for some reason.” They do. It’s one of Excelsior’s favorite bar stories. “Can you let me go now? I don’t like it when people hold me like this.” Brainstorm releases his shoulders, but not before shaking him a little more. “Are we going to do science _now_?” 

“What do you call breaking that lock? That was science. That was engineering!” 

“That was larceny.” Still, the bitlet grins up at the ‘bot. “I wanna blow something up!” 

“Then lets go blow something up! You can tell me more _stories_ that you heard from your mentor.” 

“Kay!”

The two mechs immediately get to work on crafting a rather brilliant, colorful, and more than simply _against_ regulation bomb. For science. 

\-- 

Carnellians are a medium sized, organic, plant-based species whose home planet dwells on the outer rim of Federation space. Roughly two thousand years ago their planet, as well as the vast resources it contained, able to be converted in a rough energon-adjacent product, ran headlong into Cybertron’s frontline. It, as most planets, did not survive the confrontation. Unlike a vast majority of others, however, its people did. 

As a consequence of this, the Carnellians utterly abhor all sentient mechanoids. They’ve been known to pick rogue units off without care of who, exactly, they’re offing. In the last twenty years Rodimus has had exactly three face-to-face confrontations with them, not a single one good. 

Luckily for him, by the revenge laws of thirty-six different sections of Federation law (not all of them exactly relevant), this makes every single Carnellian ship fair game for Rodimus’ larcenous needs. 

Rodimus snarls as he rewires the consul. “Just my luck,” he hisses, “That these Pit-damned Carnellians have absolutely no fragging idea how to mod a Grellik ship.” Grelliks, from Grellorik, being mechanoids that the former crew of this ship had offed and then stolen from, as is their habit. He doesn’t really care. It might have belong to _Camiens_ , for all he cared right now. He just knows he needs to get it rewired and flight capable in time to hopefully catch up to the _Lost Light_ , undoing whatever fragged up upgrades the Carnellians had hackjobbed into the ship to get it plant-friendly. Until then he’s hurtling through space without an accessible nav system, comm system, bridge, or general ships control. It seemed at first glance as if the original thieves had ripped out the Grellik control systems to replace them with their own. Carnellians use pheromones to communicate. 

Slagging weird organics. 

When the center console lights up in blue, he cheers. When it reports back that the ship was “Locked from access due to being pinged as stolen”, he curses again. 

“This was never an issue when I was a petty trivin' thief,” he tells the computer. A ripped away panel reveals an uplink center. He flips the switch on it and feels the controls go wireless as he’s linked into the ship’s onboard system. It’s not quite Cybertronian, but he has more practical knowledge of other mechanoid systems these years, so it only takes a few clicks and an unfortunately long hardagro hack session to get the ship under his control. 

Bucking, whimpering, and still trying to fight back with line of code it has, but under his control. He onlines the nav system, rechecks his coordinates, and makes a flightplan for Lork. 

It’s over six months away. 

He leans over the bridge console, its mess of wires and weird alien systems, and feels the panic swamp his spark. “Primus,” he prays, “Don’t let him piss them off. Primus, let him be okay.” He feels fine trembles up his arms, an ache settle low in his backstrut. He laughs, half panic and amused. “Brat really knows how to make a mess, doesn’t he?” 

Then he straightens, settles back into a too-small captain’s chair in a practiced sprawl, and curses up a right old storm.   
\--

 

“This,” Brainstorm says, “Is called _Nitrogen Triodide_.” His optics are scrunched up into two gleeful crescents, waggling his fingers at a pile of white powder inside a sealed room. Ignis taps on the observation window. “The fourth most explosive material in the universe. Plus extras for flavor.” 

“When you make things go boom, you really make things go boom.” Ignis had taken his earlier perch on the ‘bot’s back again. A few hours on the ship had taught him that being near other mechs is comforting in a similar way that attaching himself to Excelsior is - as if the presence of the other helped regulate his systems, helped steady his field - and he’s reluctant to give that up when it’s so easily accessible. It’s not as if Brainstorm minds, anyways. “This is going to be _epic_.” 

Someone clears their intake from the doorway. Brainstorm jumps, making Ignis squeak. “What is going to be epic?” The mech in the doorway drawls. 

Brainstorm flinches. “Heeeey, Percy." Then he glances over his shoulder at a beaming bitlet, and sighs. “We were going to do _controlled_ ,” he stresses the word until static drags on the syllables, “Explosion tests.” 

“For science!” Ignis chirps. Mismatched optics meet his, and the bitlet quails. “I, uh, I mean...” He shrugs. “For science, pretty much.” 

“I was very safe,” he assures the other sciencemech. He leans his shoulder against the glass. Inside the observation room, the Nitrogen Triodide blows. The window rattles and floor vibrates. Startled, Ignis jerks away from Brainstorm, flopping onto the floor with a yelp. “Not my fault!” 

“Ooow...” 

Perceptor sighs. “Velocity called a meeting,” he says, looking faintly disappointed with the entire world but the both of them in particular. “I suggest you hurry up before Ultra Magnus realizes you turned off your comms again, Brainstorm.” 

Yelping, Brainstorm runs out of the room. Unwilling to be left behind, Ignis folds down into his racecar mode to follow. 

They're meeting in a huge hall. Holos line the walls, written in Cybertronian. Ignis never learned how to read it. His carrier had always said he'd install it later, when he'd need it, but the time had never come. He stares at the glyphs without comprehension, transforming up as they enter. At the head of the room, three mechs stand behind a podium, accompanied by the two femmes he'd already met. 

"What's this about then?" He asks Perceptor, who'd made a point to keep close to him. 

"You, mechlet." A hand rubs his helm. "I've been informed of..." He hums. "Well, of exactly what you are. It was decided that this would be a decision best broadcast to the rest of the crew." 

"Why?" They settle at the back of the room. After a moment he holds up his arms, "Pick me up? I can't see." 

Perceptor picks him up by the scruff and settles him on his turretless shoulder. "Better?" 

"Yeah." 

"The Camiens think that you should be taken care of by the crew -" 

"I don't need to be taken care of," he huffs. "I take care of myself all the time." 

"I was under the impression that 'bots under ninety need constant care and observation." He sounds amused. Ignis kicks him, grinning when his fans stutter. "Don't do that." 

"I don't need no one watching me! Only cubs need watching all the time!" He kicks him again. 

"If you do that a third time I'm giving you to Cyclonus." He points casually to the purple mech who'd stuck him in the cell earlier that day. 

Wow, he thinks after a shocked moment, it's only been a day. 

Grumpy, he settles down to listen. It's not like it's going to be anything he doesn't know already. 

\-- 

 

Hot Rod wakes up in the arms of a bot he doesn’t recognize, which is worrying because he recognizes everyone. Even bots he doesn’t know very well he can still teek as a Racer, because all Racers have similar fields. Most of them are related in some way, at least in the Tunnels. He flickers his optics in sleepy puzzlement, frowning when he realizes he’s not in the Tunnels, not below ground where it is _safe_. He’s not sure where he is, actually. 

“Who are you?” He mumbles, feeling like that time he was in racing practice and accidentally ran straight into a wall. Like everything is sore. He was lucky that time since one of the other sparklings had done the same thing a few months before, except he’d crushed his helm, so they’d used his left over strut to replace Hot Rod’s broken one instead of making him wait for it to heal on its own. That would have taken forever, but it didn’t.

Racers can go crazy if they’re forced off their feet long enough. He tries not to think about it. 

The big ‘bot who’s carrying him smiles, showing off two missing denta and some rust on the bottom set. He’s got a spiky sort of helm that Hot Rod guesses might be handsome, but he can’t really say. His carrier says that the closer a ‘bot looks to you the bigger chance you share coding, so you should never think anyone who has the same paint colors or helm type or sometimes even altmode is handsome. You just can’t. Bad things happen if you do.

“I’m High Roller,” he says. Paint is peeling off his jaw, dark blue over a lighter shade of green, and that’s covered in oil mixed with soot. “Are you awake now, little bot?” A big finger flicks his chevron, which right now is the only set of points on his helm. His carrier has a whole crown of spikes though, so he thinks he’ll grow some soon. 

“Sorta.” He stretches. “Where am I? Who are you?” He wiggles a bit, processor clearing. The end of the party's just coming back to him. “I feel okay. Did you fix me, too?” 

Another bot comes into Hot Rod’s limited range of sight, bigger, with a rounded helm with two large vents on the sides of it. The little bot tries to sit up, frowning when High Roller tighten his hold so he can’t. “I am Bolt,” the new bot says. His lip is split, and so is the metal just beneath one of his optics, like he’s been hit in the face a few times. When he grins, energon wells up from his split lip. “Welcome to the resistance, little ‘bot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter this time. But! This fic is now 43 pages long. Next time we'll hit fifty, whoop whoop! 
> 
> This fic is so slagging self indulgent.


	6. Chapter 6

Ignis squirms as he watches the bots at the podium talk quietly with each other. “They haven’t even started talking yet,” he tells Perceptor. 

“They’re still waiting for the rest of the crew. I knew Brainstorm had turned off his comms.” He sounds amused. “As I have not been informed entirely, I did not want to be late due to his negligence.” 

“That seems right. Matri always said you were the smart one.” He hooks the tips of his claws into the seam of Perceptor’s thigh. He leans a little against the mech. He’s about to say something when one of the mechs behind the podium clears his voxbox. 

He squints. He can’t see that far. It sounds like the captain, though. “My fellow Autobots,” he starts, “I’ve come to you with a ... concerning matter.” He sounds hesitant. Ignis almost pities him. This must be the most awkward conversation in the world. 

Robot sex-ed for robots who don’t have sex. Or Cybertronians or whatever. 

He kind of wants to know how they’re going to explain babies. Excelsior totally _freaked_ every time Ignis told him about another way organics give birth, and he’d always heard that other Cybertronians were totally organic-phobic. 

“As most of you know, earlier this sol we gained a new crew member on the _Lost Light_. His name is Ignis. Will Perceptor bring him on stage?” Perceptor snorts, but after a moment he picks the mechlet up by his scruffbar and starts pushing through the mechs in the room. They start parting ahead of him after he gives them a taste of his elbows.

The captain is at the head of the room, alongside Ratchet, Drift, the blue medical femme, a weird mech without a nose, and a totally cool mech with a flat yellow face. Ignis feels his knees draw up protectively towards his chest, the spikes on them pointed outwards. 

He doesn’t really like the captain. He threatened to crush him with his huge stupid servos.

After Perceptor delivers him to Drift, dropping him in his arms rather than setting him on the floor, the captain says, “Now Ratchet will explain further.” He clears his voxbox into his fist again. The medic revs his engine and snarls. Ignis thinks he really doesn’t want to give this talk. 

“‘Course you’re backing out,” he hisses, too low to be heard by anyone outside their small group. 

The captain has the gall to blush. 

Ignis snickers. Then he squeaks as Ratchet snags him from Drift’s arms and hefts him up on top of the podium. “Hey!” 

“You’re gonna be up where everyone can see you,” Ratchet commands. “While Velocity and I explain... this.” 

“Explain babies,” Ignis hisses gleefully. 

A rough servo pokes his side. “You’re the example,” Ratchet says, and then, to the entire room, “Alright! Anyone prone to uncontrollable outbursts better get it under control right now! I’m not going through this more than once for you idiots that can’t listen, you hear me?” 

There’s a mumbled assent from around the room. “Good. Now, how many of you here know how organics reproduce.” A few mechs raise their servos. It can’t be more than a dozen mechs. “Right. Well.” Ratchet coughs into his fist. He looks at Velocity and grumbles, “Aren’t you the one who knows this?” 

“I don’t do public speaking.” She smiles. Ratchet huffs. 

Ignis leans back and tries to pretend like he’s not the object of attention for more crew than he’s known his entire life. 

“I’m sure everyone here knows what a spark merge is.” There’s a ripple through the mass of mechs as helms bob. “Well, according to Caminus science, when two sparks merge and the energy is _not_ shunted off - like our systems do automatically - a new spark can form. This new spark initiated lines within a mech’s matrix coding to cannibalize its frame to craft a new one within the mech’s chassis.” He taps his chest, right below his spark chamber. “Here.” 

He waits for them to react. They don’t. 

Most of them probably don’t understand what he’s saying. It’s so alien to them, this creation of sparks between two mechs, that they probably won’t until they’re given an example. He pats Ignis’ helm. “This is a mech formed from one such process. At forty years old his systems are entirely autonomous from his -” He hesitates, stumbling over the term, “Carrier. He was gestated for twenty years and then unfurled, where he continued to grow under the care of his carrier until he was fifteen.” 

The numbers are wrong, but Ignis doesn’t correct him. He counts the high, sharp clinks his heels make against the podium front instead. It’s calming. 

Comms pass between mechs, the air thick with radio signals. If he cocks his head he can almost hear them. He feels like if he squints hard enough he might be able to read the texts flitting through the room, but he can’t. His face isn’t very elastic still. 

Someone raises their hand. “Yo, if we’re actually, like, able to ... do whatever that is, make more of us,” his engine makes a high, broken sounding whine, “Why ain’t we seen more mech _making_ more mechs.” 

Ratchet and Velocity share a glance. They both hesitate. 

“Because all of them got killed.” Ignis worries the palms of his hands on the long spikes of his knees, quietly cataloguing the exact shade of aqua they are, bright against his yellow hands. “The government killed em all and then they killed all the stuff inside _new_ mechs being made that lets them make more, and every time you see one they call it a parasite and then they kill it -” He shivers as Ratchet pets the wing of his spoiler. 

“We don’t know the full story,” Ratchet admits. “But, yes, what he said is true. The parasite we call a ‘spark hopper’ is ... isn’t what we thought it was.” He shudders. 

Ignis bites his bottom lip, scraping the barest bit of dermal plating off with his sharp denta. _Spark hopper_ \- the name clicks into place, another point of reference to a species he’s only ever been on the outside of. They would have called him a spark hopper. 

“Regardless, we’re going to do our best to alert Cybertron of this. We don’t want our former state of ignorance to continue.” That part of the speech sounds rehearsed. Even he doesn’t believe it. The hand on his spoiler keeps rubbing comforting circles into his metal. It feels nice. Weird, and kind of tingly, but nice. 

The mechs keep staring at him. 

“Why do you know all this?” The mech who’d found him the first time calls out. 

“My carrier told me!” 

“And how’d he know?”

Ignis has to think for a moment. 

Excelsior had always been generous about certain things and really, really not with others, like culture and stories and actual personal events. Mostly the latter weren’t part of Ignis’ education. He’d never wondered _why_ he’d never been told where they were really from. Like his species’ recent history, his Matri’s past had just seemed like some big black hole in space. He’d only ever noticed what he didn’t know when he’d accidentally found the edge of it.

“...I don’t know,” he admits. “I think we’re from the Prion colony, or maybe Cybertron? Before the war. Matri said that his carrier told him stuff, so I guess he learned from his family. But I don’t know.” His shoulders creep up around his audial spikes. He doesn’t like not knowing things, especially when people obviously think he should. “I don’t know.” 

“Real use you are,” someone sneers. 

“Shut up!” Ratchet snarls back. He bares his teeth. 

A large, warm hand settled under Ignis’ spoiler hub, fingers brushing Ratchet’s. 

“I’m useful!” He tries to straighten, but his spine remains curved. “I know what -” He bites down on the words before they can escape him. “I know all about sparklings and politics stuff! I can recite _From the Edge of Iacon_ from memory!” He is very proud of that accomplishment. Excelsior had listened every night as he’d practiced it, smiling indulgently as Ignis argued against invisible opponents. He’d pulled the phrases from thin air to support his points, talking around them until he couldn’t think of any more defenses against him. 

He’d dreamed of being like those mechs that write revolutionary literature. Being one of those people who talk and talk and make the whole wide universe listen. 

Tittering laughter echoes around the room. “And how useful is that? No one believes that stuff anymore kid!” 

“Functionalist slag.” Another says. 

Ignis leans back against those warm hands. His intake tightens, and his spark curls and contracts at the very back of his chamber. He doesn’t like this. 

Other crews didn’t treat him like that. They... They were nice. They pet him when he was small enough, and they crawled into his lap and touched up his paint. People on other crews listened to him and told him he was smart sometimes. Even when they didn’t they never insulted him. 

He’s _not_ useless. 

He wants his matri. He wants a hug and a kiss on his helm and to - he wants his matri. 

“I know stories,” he mutters. He rubs his optic. “I know what the colonies were. I ...” 

The hand on his spoiler hub rises to rub the back of his helm. 

People are still talking, but he’s tired. This isn’t fun anymore. 

He tilts his helm back until he look at the captain. He’s surprised that it isn’t his hand on his head; that’s the big blue mech with the flat helm panels. He rests the rest of his weight against that big hand. “Can I go to sleep?” He asks. 

He’s not sleeping-tired, but he doesn’t want to be here anymore. 

“Of course,” the big mech says. 

“Can I have a cube of oil shale before I go to sleep?” The huge mech picks him up by his spoiler. After a moment’s consideration he settles him in the crook of one huge arm, back against his chest to accommodate his spoiler. 

“I have some oil shale candy. You may have a piece.” Ratchet is still bickering with the crowd. It looks like Megatron is about to join in. 

Ignis wiggles around to make sure he won’t suddenly fall. “...Can I talk to my carrier?” 

The big mech turns and walks out of the room, through the back way behind the podium. “We’ll go up to the bridge, how does that sound? If your carrier answers, you can talk to him. If not, we’ll try again in the morning.” 

“He’ll answer.” Ignis is certain. There’s no way he couldn’t answer him. He’s probably out of his mind with worry by now. 

Ignis rests his audial fins against his chest, listening to the hum of his systems. It feels nice. He can feel his field mech with the bigger mech’s, slotting into place with startling ease. It feels good. Slowly, as their systems sync, he feels his grip on his exhaustion slip. His engine starts to slow. His fans still, and his frame heats to a drowsy sort of warmth. 

“Are you tired?” 

He shakes his head. “I want to talk to my Matri.” He can tell they’re heading towards the bridge, at least. A few more minutes and he’ll get to talk to his carrier. 

He just has to wait a few more minutes. 

Just a few more... 

\-- 

 

Hot Rod curls up next to High Roller. “So... you’re like, low grade Decepticons?” 

“We’re not Decepticons at all, little bot.” Above his head, the two bots exchange glances. “We’re... We’re freedom fighters who have set their sights a little lower than all of Cybertron.” 

“We want to free Nyon. Just Nyon.” Bolt shrugs. “We’ve pretty much accepted the fact that we’re not like the other parts of Cybertron. Things survived here that didn’t survive anywhere else, and we’ve gotta protect it. From the Autobots _and_ the Decepticons.” 

“But I thought the Decepticons were the good guys?” A hang scrubs the top of his helm. 

“Yeah, mech, they’re the good guys. But we can’t trust them to do what’s right for us. For our city.” 

Hot Rod nods seriously. “Yeah.” Nyon is _their_ city. The tunnels aren’t like any other place in the whole universe, probably, and there’s _history_ in its struts. Solar Flare had said that, once, talking to one of the other archivists. _There’s history in the struts of this city._ It’s the only real place he’s ever known. 

He considers both of them carefully. They’re dirty and suspicious, two huge, obvious factory workers. 

Hot Rod does not live in Nyon proper. He knows about Functionalism and the Autobots in the distant way he knows about Iacon and suns and the Knights of Cybertron - they’re mostly stories, things that he can identify by what he lacks rather than any direct pressure on him or his. How they can’t be around Autotroopers; their lack of energon; the way the city above them grew poor and dark long before his time. He doesn’t really understand. 

He looks at the both of them, grim and dirty, the steady glow of their optics, for the first time in his entire functioning realizes this. His Nyon is not their Nyon. They’ve only just brushed each other, caught in a Venn diagram’s intersecting gap entirely by chance. 

The Racers of Nyon only meet the mechs of the city when they race and when they search for information to record. He hadn’t realized how strange that was. Of course they didn’t, before. It wasn’t safe. He wonders why. 

“You mechs need any help from the fastest miniracecar in Nyon?” 

They smile at him. “The revolution can always use another set of servos, little mech.” 

\-- 

 

The big mech shakes him awake. Ignis blinks sleepily to clear the condensation from his optics. “We’re at the bridge?” He asks muzzily. 

“I’m pulling up your carrier’s comm number now, Ignis. Can you stay awake while I do this?” 

“Yeah.” He stretches, working out the kinks in his cables. He’s still tired, his systems sluggish and largely unresponsive. The comm unit rings. Once, twice, and then - 

“You bastards better be calling to say you’re going to bring my bit back to me.” His matri growls. 

“Hey Matri.” Even his voice is muzzy, laced with static. “I wanted to tell you good night. It’s okay here. I got to make things go explode.” He feels like a small sparkling again, talking to his matri. Far younger than he is. 

“They’re feeding you? You’re not getting in trouble? Staying out of danger?” He sounds worried. It’s really rare that he actually sounds worried. 

“Yeah, Matri. I hung out with Brainstorm. Did you know he’s not married to Perceptor? And that they didn’t fight a gryphon?” He’s starting to wake up a little bit. He doesn’t think he really will until he’s let his recharge cycle run it’s course. 

His matri laughs. “Yeah, bit, I know. But isn’t it funnier that way?” 

“Brainstorm got angry when I said he was in love with Perceptor when we broke into his lab.” He leans his helm back against his chest. His optics flicker. It’s so hard to keep them online...

“You broke into Perceptor’s lab?” His matri sounds like he’s laughing. 

“Yeah... To blow stuff up. I kinda...” He runs his hands over his face. “Matri, where are we from?” Even to his audios his voice is small and very young. 

“Bitlet -” He knows that tone of voice. 

“Tell me the truth.” 

There’s a long pause. Ignis is almost about to give up and change the subject when Excelsior says, “Prion. We’re from the colony of Prion, registered with the Federation as refugees from a Black Box Consortium attack. We launched from Nyon.” There’s reluctance in his tone, the perfect touch of it. It has the right amount of tremor to it, the right amount of raw honesty, like he wants nothing more than to keep it a secret. 

Ignis knows that he’s lying. 

“Okay,” he says. He can’t help the way he subtly draws away from the comm console. He’s been lied to again, and this time his carrier thinks he can get away with it. “Night, Matri.” 

“You going already bitty? We just started talking. I wanted to hear how your day went!” 

“I’m really tired.” He sighs. “I can ask the captain to call you in the morning?” 

“I’ll deal with that bitty. You go sleep, okay? I’ll call the captain in a bit and have something set up. I love you.” 

He doesn’t hesitate. “I love you too.” He smiles blindly at the console. When he looks up at the mech carrying him, he’s staring at the console too. It clicks off. He bites his bottom lip before asking, “Can you take me back to my cell?” 

“They have you in a cell?” His attention is immediately pulled from the comm unit. “That’s not right. Velocity said you’re still developing.” 

“No one’s given me a room yet.” 

“You can stay with me tonight.” 

“In your bed?” 

“I’ll take the floor. My berth should be fine for you.” 

“... If you say so.” 

Ignis is asleep before they exit the bridge. 

\--

 

Rodimus presses the balls of his palms into his optics and tries to breathe. 

Ignis had never asked about his origins before. His kid could be weirdly incurious, understanding of what he was willing and not willing to disclose. He’d never thought it’d be an issue before. His bit hadn’t ever needed to know about him, so he’d never asked. Except something on the _Lost Light_ had told him he had to ask now. 

And Rodimus had lied to him, because he’d known that someone was listening in. There’s no one left from Nyon, not really. Him. Maybe three or four others. The Neutrals that had taken their side in Nyon were too poor to leave. Everyone had been too poor to leave, and time had chipped away at the city’s survivors, war had, until there weren’t that many of them left. Fewer remembered Nyon than even Vos. 

His fans whine and he bows his head. 

Ignis knows he lied. 

Primus, his bit isn’t going to forgive him for that anytime soon.


	7. Chapter 7

Ignis wakes up while the big mech is still asleep on the floor. He runs through a shortlist of his carrier’s onlining protocols, then swings his legs over the side of the berth and slips down onto the floor. It’s quiet; he’s long since mastered the ability to creep past sleeping creatures. 

The door opens for him when he goes up on his tippy toes and blindly pats the panel. He glances behind him at the sound of it, but the mech sleeps on. He must not be very self aware, or Ignis assumes he isn’t, since a sound like that would have woken Excelsior. When the mech doesn’t wake, or even stir, he trots out of the room and down the hall. 

He’s lost. It’s early in the cycle, or just maybe in the middle of the morning shift, so no one’s around. His mapping program is blank for this area. He was asleep when he was brought down, and the program is an active one, not an automatic one, so he needs to consciously track where he’s going for it to work. 

“Gorramit,” he hisses under his breath. His tank is nearly empty and he doesn’t know the way to Swerve’s bar. 

After a while he sighs and starts to pick turns by random. It’s not like it really matters. 

He was lost by the third turn he made, if he were to be honest with himself. The ship’s the biggest one he’s ever been on - it’s probably the biggest place he’s ever been allowed to explore on his own, actually - and everything looks pretty much the same. 

It must be hours before he finally reaches the end of the maze of halls and doors. His peds hurt, and all he really wants to do is rest his servos somewhere. He feels itchy and too large for his frame, unsteady. The mechlet wraps unsteady arms around himself, his field flexing and contracting in little shivers. 

He realizes that he fells asleep before he read his stories as he walks out onto the viewing deck of the ship. 

The universe unfolds in front of him. He considers it for a moment, helm tilted. They’re drifting at the edge of a cluster of stars, skipping across the borders of their gravitational pull; there’s nothing but pinpricks of light and asteroids, this far out of the way. A gas giant shines in pink just far enough away to be boring. 

When he was seventeen, still living in the cavity below his carrier’s spark, they’d accepted a post on a ship that was owned by an artist. She was taking pictures at the edge of civilized space, where it was more pirate than space captain. Mostly Ignis remembers the nebulae she had been fascinated with; the rest of space has never been as beautiful as that. The gaseous clouds had seemed magical to him. It was one of the first real views of space he’d ever had. Excelsior would carry him out on the hull of the ship and tell him stories about the pictures he saw in them. 

Their contract had ended when the nebulae had contracted and collapsed. He still has one of the pictures she’d taken saved to his storypad. It’s still one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen. 

Ignis sits down in front of the viewscreen, legs crossed, and pulls the pad from his subspace. 

The pad is too big for his servos, ungainly and bulky, with a dull silver casing covered in scratches and dents. Excelsior had painted the back with flames at one point, and in some places the graffiti has worn away to reveal an even more severely scratched back. A name had probably been etched into it, but it’s long gone by now. 

He turns it on and watches the screen light up blue. “I’m gonna...” He traces a finger down the list. It’s not written in Neo-cybex; he’s not exactly sure what language it _is_ written in, but he knows what it isn’t. “I’m gonna read a story that makes me happy.” He puffs out his cheeks. 

Storytime is usually for learning, but he doesn’t feel like learning right now. He wants something warm and bubbly and happy. 

He flips the pad to the right page, to a story he reads so often he doesn’t even need to think about how far to drag the cursor to find the right page, and begins to read. _How the Prince Became a Seeker..._

\-- 

Rodimus feels like he’s screaming into empty space. 

The fact that screaming might be more useful pisses him off. 

“I _need_ to be able to talk to him whenever I need to.” He hisses. At the other end of the connection someone - it sounds like Blaster, the utter slagger - scoffs.

“You can’t. We need to keep this channel free for emergencies. Ask the Captains for more time, but you’re gonna have to go by their schedules.” 

“Then ask them!” 

“Can’t. They’re not on the bridge right now.” 

“Then. Who. _Is_?” Rodimus grinds his denta together. 

“Ultra Magnus. Who’s going to tell you that you can’t just call all the time because we need to keep this line open for emergencies. And that you should probably hang up and wait until we call you.” He sounds amused. 

If it wouldn’t break the stupid ship he’s on, he’d punch something. “You _stole my bit and this isn’t an emergency?!_ ” 

“Not one we can fix, Excelsior.” 

He screeches. Only a little bit, though. 

He is very stressed right now. “You _will_ let me talk to my bit every night. I don’t care if I have to call the _Primus damned Federation_ you hear me? I will! I will call every gorammed space cop I can think of if you don’t.” He sucks in a deep breath. All he has to do - for hours, alone - is think about how everything could go wrong and how angry he is about this. How scared he is. “I will call the fraggin’ Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord!” Unseen, he jabs his finger at the speaker accusingly. 

“Sure you will, mech. And he’ll tell you that a line needs to be clear for emergencies.” The reply is drawled lazily. 

Rodimus snarls and rages silently because he’s spent enough time on ships to know it’s true. It’s true and he hate that - hates the fact that he’ll have to wait to talk to him, that he won’t be in reach of comm or audio most of the time, that for the first time in almost a century he’s alone - and he lets the anger that comes with that hate smother everything else. 

“He needs his recharge stories,” he says, tone low and furious. “He needs someone to make sure he wakes up if he’s having a nightmare, someone to help him with his lessons - he’s so smart, okay, you can’t just ignore school or he’ll start taking things apart in his spare time, you’ll part of your ship to curious servos - he needs someone to feed him and bathe him and make sure he doesn’t try meteor surfing on his own, okay? You can’t just take him and expect everything to be okay!” He throws up his hands. “He’s not a mech like you are! He needs help!” 

“If you ping our systems with a data pack of specifics, I’m sure accommodations could be made...” His voice is quieter than Blaster’s. Farther away from the speakers. 

Rodimus flinches anyways. His spark settles at the bottom of his chamber, suddenly weighted. He’d recognize that voice anywhere. “I’ll put one together.” He forges ahead. “But that doesn’t help the fact that this is the first time he’s been away from me for more than a day. He’s - he’s too young!” 

Physically, maybe even mentally, he isn’t. Rodimus himself had spent weeks out of the tunnels by the time he was Ignatious’ age, but that was war and in his mind it doesn’t count. Ignis and he are different mechanisms. There’s no telling what it could do to him! 

“We’re holding lessons about sparkling care, courtesy of Nautica and Velocity, three times a week. If there’s anything he needs we can address it. No one on this ship wants anything bad to happen because he’s here.” 

Rodimus has to stop and take several calming invents. 

Primus, he thinks, Drift shouldn’t sound so frellin’ sincere. He might actually start to believe him. 

“I want the Captain to agree to evening contact with Ignis. I need to talk to him. I need to know he’s okay.” His hands are shaking. He clutches the arms of his chair and pretends they aren’t. “At least ten minutes.” 

There’s a long period of silence. Finally, “Megatron and Thunderclash have agreed; at the end of Beta shift you’ll get ten minutes on the comm with him. We’ll ping you so you know when to pick up.” There’s a note of anxiousness in his voice. “We’ll try to reunite the two of you as soon as possible.” 

“That’s -” _Click_! 

They hung up on him. They hung up on him! 

“That fragger!” 

\-- 

Someone settles beside him. He can feel the shift of their weight on the deck, the air they displace on his spoiler. He doesn’t look behind him to see who it is. It probably doesn’t matter. 

“Everyone was really worried about you.” The mech says. 

Ignis ignores him. He’s moved on to the stories he was supposed to be studying this week. He doesn’t want to break his concentration. 

“You shouldn’t walk off like that. When Thunderclash onlined and couldn’t find you he was worried.” A hand rests on the top edge of his spoiler. He flicks the winglet out from under it. “You need to come with me now. We can get you something to eat.” 

“I’m not hungry.” 

“Yes you are.” 

Ignis looks up at the mech - at Drift - and frowns. “I was hungry a while ago. Now I want to read my pad.” He pauses to think about what he wants to say next. “Go away.” 

Drift laughs. “How about I carry you to Swerve’s place and you read your pad there?” 

“...Only if you buy me an order of rust sticks with nickel. And double refined low grade!” 

“You drive a hard bargain, mech.” He stands. Ignis scrambles up to stand next to him. When Drift walks out, the mechlet is following eagerly at his heels. 

\-- 

Hot Rod follows doggedly behind High Roller. “So what’re we doing?” He asks eagerly. The street is dingy, warehouses lining either side of it. On the horizon the jagged crowns of factories belch faded grey smoke into the air. 

The truck sighs. “Nothing, new frame. _You’re_ going back to wherever you came from, and we’re going to work.” 

“Work?” He tilts his head. He understands the concept, of course, but - “Isn’t your work at night?” Solar Flare works at night, just like most of the tunnel’s occupants. Day workers are rare and unusual for them. Unlike everyone else he knows, they have a steady income. One day worker could support the entire tunnel system through a losing streak. 

“Night?” Bolt looks over his shoulder at him. “That’s a pretty old term for the off-cycle.” 

Hot Rod shrugs. “It’s what we call it.” 

“You’re not one of those weird religious bots are you?” 

“Why you gonna call me that?” High Roller stops just long enough for Hot Rod to dig his claws into a seam. He scrambles up the mech and perches on his shoulder. The pronged tips of his toes scrape thick peels of paint off his plating where the pads of his feet slip, gouging into the metal. There are layers of paint built upon layers of paint; it almost makes him stop to look at it. The large mech has tall shoulder turrets on his shoulders, the edges of wheel wells, and Hot Rod leans against it. 

The mech’s engines a heavy, rolling thunder shuddering through his plating. Hot Rod tries to match it, but it’s a turbo foxes’ purr to a high octane racer’s engine in comparison. 

“‘Cause the only mechs who pull out old words like that ain’t mechs on the street like us. It’s them religious ones, the ones stuck in the past, y’know?” High Roller holds his legs together with one hand to keep him steady on his shoulder as he walks. “So you a religious freak or not, little mech?” 

“Well what’d you consider a religious freak?”

Bolt chimes in, “Someone that does that whole prayer and fate slag.” He laughs, this sort of rough cackling that makes Hot Rod giggle in return. It’s infectious. 

“Nah, I’m not like that!” He lifts his hands up, palms flat to the star studded sky. In the between shifts the sky seems brighter, lights aboveground shut off to conserve energy. “Primus is real but he’s not...” He watches the stars. He can name dozens of constellations but he can’t find a single one in the actual sky, pinwheel whirling above them. They’re hurtling through space at a billion miles per hour and he feels like he’s standing still.

He does not know how to articulate the world he’s lived in, steeped in a belief that has permeated everything he’s known. “Primus is the planet beneath our peds. He’s real, and he... he made us? But he’s not a god. He’s just so old we think he is.” 

That’s not right - it’s not everything - but he’s suddenly shy about expressing it. He’s not a freak, and he knows that Primus is brave and true and connected to the universe and each Cybertronian in ways Hot Rod will never understand, but he doesn’t want to say that. He doesn’t want to say the wrong thing. 

Hot Rod has always been good at lying. 

“Huh.” High Roller pats his shins. “C’mon kid, we’re almost at work. Better hop off and run to where ever you came from.” He leans over to let the mechlet slide from his shoulder and onto the ground. 

“Wait!” Hot Rod lets himself fall to the ground, knees bending to absorb the shock. He turns around and grins up at him. “Give me your servo!” 

He holds it out to him, and Hot Rod takes the bigger hand in his. He could spread his hand over the larger palm and the tips of his claws would not meet the edges of it. He doesn’t measure the size, though, but holds it flat with one hand and carefully scratches the paint with the other. “Here!” He grins. “My comm number.” 

A large thumb runs over the scratched paint. “Got you, kiddo.” 

He’s pinged with a contact bundle, which he opens and accepts. It’s coded; he can tell that it’s not real, even if he can’t tell why he knows it’s been fabricated. The data unfolds in his quarantine files and he reads them eagerly. A moment later he pings back his own data packet, though he’s careful to edit out the information he knows is supposed to be shared solely between Racers - his lineage, his racing circuit - and a shorthand map of where he’d like to meet them. 

He gets back a data packet bundled with Bolt’s info and a quick confirmation highlight on two of the points on his map. Places on his carrier’s racing circuit in the warehouse district. “See you tomorrow?” 

“Sure, little mech. See you tomorrow.” 

He watches them go, the dim glow of their biolights smearing away in green and yellow in the smog. Empties watch, too, curled up like detritus at street corners and overhangs. Their own lights are dim, dulled by lack of energon. He grins at the ones who look at him. His teeth are sharp and viciously curved. They flinch when they see them. 

He won’t eat them but spreading those types of stories has always been fun. Been safe. If they’re afraid of you they won’t hurt you, he knows, and there’s nothing scarier than a desperate mech. 

It takes him a moment to orient himself in the unfamiliar area. On the horizon the Acropolis rises in strange organic curves. He heads in that direction. The area under the Acropolis belongs firmly to the Racers. No matter where he is he can always find his way home from there. 

By the time he reaches the Acropolis his plating is dulled by pollution and smoke. The world has cut itself down to the life signs of those around him and the dull hunger in his stomach, the growing ache in his frame. He’s starting to feel the accident now, in the stress of his struts and the strained wires of his frame. 

He has to push aside heavy plating to get into the Acropolis’ dome, crawling inside and tugging it back into place. The entrance has long since stopped opening. The Acropolis was once the shining star of Nyon; now it is nothing more than a collapsing, rusted out husk. In the dark his biolights shine far brighter than he’s used to. He finds his way to the elevator shaft by touch alone, hidden behind a statue. It’s only just large enough for a smaller Racer, and one day he knows he’ll grow too large for it. 

He slides down the metal chute. Glow light paint smears past him in dizzying patterns, layers built on layers, overlaid by paint scratches where mechlets have brushed against the metal on their way down. Sparks fly up behind him. 

The chute ends in an artery. Hot Rod tumbles out of the ceiling with a shrieking giggle and a shower of bright orange sparks, tangled in his own limbs. The artery’s walls are bright painted with the careful designs of full archivers. They stretch under his peds when he stands, worn away by time but still carefully maintained; stories in dizzying patterns spin across the tubular tunnel. He presses his hand to the same story he always presses his hand to - _the day the sun was torn away_ \- and grins.


	8. Chapter 8

This time, Ignis gets to climb up on his own barstool. He lays the pad down on the countertop and grins at Swerve. 

He doesn’t smile back. It’s early in the cycle and the bar is just about empty, outside of a huge, dented yellow behemoth of a ‘bot crouched by the door. The lights are brighter than they were last night. The little mech is cleaning things behind the bar, wiping away the traces of binges the night before to prepare for more the night ahead. 

Ignis flips through the pad idly, watching the pages flash by in a smear of rainbow colors. 

“Whatcha got there?” Swerve taps on the screen. The image scatters for a moment before coming back together. 

“Study stuff,” he says. “I wanna glass of lowgrade and rust sticks with nickel.” He tacks on a grudging “Please,” at the end. He doesn’t look up. “I have to compare the rise of Functionalism in Cybertronian society to that of organic shapism and determine why they’d both happen when one’s made of metal and the other usually just look different.” He sighs. It’s such a stupid assignment. 

“That sounds complicated.” Drift leans over his shoulder to read his pad.

“My carrier makes me do homework when I’m not working.” He glances up at the rust sticks set in front of him. He takes on and bites down on it mercilessly, chewing it loud and open mouthed. Bits of rust flake off and cover his chin. 

“Close your mouth,” Drift tells him. “You sure you’re old enough to be learning that?” 

Before he can respond Swerve’s snagging the pad from his hands. “‘The rise of Functionalism is intimately tied to the remains of a failed civil war, to the end of Ratioism, and to the agglutination -” He pauses, befuddled. 

“If you tap on the word it brings up a definition,” Ignis pipes up. He leans over and tries to snatch it out of Swerve’s hands, but the taller mech just holds it up higher. “Give it back! It’s mine!” His voice hits an almost painful pitch. 

Both of them wince. Startled, Swerve fumbles it. The thick pad hits the bar and bounces, Ignis scrambling after it with a yelp. He snatches it and holds it as tight as he can, feeling the metal creak under the force. “Don’t touch my stuff!” He screams. The jerk of his hands had knocked the energon cup from the counter and it spills across it, dripping onto the floor, his knees, Drift’s lap, viscous and cold. The mechling bows his head. Cleaning fluid drips down his cheeks and the tip of his nose. His vents hiccup, lips pulling back from his denta. His shoulders tremble. He clutches the pad closer. 

It's the only Cybertronian thing he's ever owned. He knows it's dumb, because it's not like he's ever going to even _see_ Cybertron - he'd long since figured that out - but it's the only connection he has. It's the only way he'll ever know anything about who he was supposed to be. He's carried the dumb pad through pirate attacks and across entire _galaxies_ , and he's not gonna let some dumb _robot_ try and take it from him!

Arms wrap around his waist. Big hands, big arms, something soft and warm like his carrier’s field. He doesn’t lean into the touch, but he doesn’t pull away. Someone’s chattering low over his head, but the sounds blur together. 

When he looks up Swerve is holding him. Drift just keeps staring at him, blue optics wide, frame pulled taunt. Ignis almost laughs at the thought that the mech can't deal with a little crying. 

Crying makes him feel okay. After a while the tears clear up, and he’s tired. He leans against Swerve’s ches, even though he's still kind of angry at him, and feels the thrum of his spark through their plates. Listens to his systems as they click and rumble, the rush of fluids through his frame. Smells his wax and sweet engex. It calms him. It reminds him of his carrier. 

Swerve pats his spoiler hub awkwardly. “You okay now?” 

Still shaking, Ignis nods. “...Don’t touch my pad.” He mutters. 

“I won’t.” He releases the mechlet, who shifts until he’s no long on his knees on the stool. “You okay now? I mean if you’re not I’ll get you another glass of energon, something warm I think, the memo Nautica put out said you’d like that, warm stuff is good for your tank or something.” He bustles behind the bar again, his mouth never stopping. Drift lets it fly over his head. Words are hard right now. 

Instead he inspects the story pad carefully. There’s another scuff on one of the corners but it’s otherwise unmarked. He lets out a sigh of relief, clicking it on to scroll through the pages. His spark, pulled into a small, tight ball in his panic, expands to fill its chamber again. 

“Why’s that so important to you?” Swerve slides a thick mug of steaming energon in front of him. 

Ignis hugs the pad to his chest with one hand and holds the handle of the mug with the other, taking a sip. This cup is minibot sized, and while it’s big it’s not impossible for him to hold, just a bit clumsy. “My carrier gave it to me,” he mutters. “We don’t... we don’t have a lot of stuff ‘cause we move around a lot. And we don’t have a lot of credits.” He looks at the mech consideringly, his worst instincts pinging at him insistently, and continues. “We don’t have a big family. These stories are the only one I have about my home. My carrier’s home.” He adds a touch of trembling to his voice. 

“It’s okay, right?” Cleaning the countertop, Swerve pauses in worry. 

He nods. Drift pats his back. “You’re okay,” Drift assures him. The two adults share worried glances above his head. Ignis sniffles pathetically. 

“I’m just worried, ‘cause, ‘cause what if it broke? Then Matri wouldn’t be here to fix it or tell me stories ‘cause he’s on another ship. And then I wouldn’t have anything to remind me of home ‘cause I can’t even talk to him right now so _he_ can’t tell me stories, and, and...” He lets his voice fade to static. Then he finishes his quickly-cooling energon to hide the grin he can’t quite control. 

Someone steps into the doorway. He looks up to see the mech from last night, features drawn into a moue of disappointment. “You left,” he says. 

Ignis sighs. He downs the rest of his energon and hops off his stool. “Am I in trouble?” He asks. 

“You might be.” The big mech holds out one hand. One arm still keeping the pad firmly against his chest, Ignis takes it with the other. 

In the night most of the primer had worn away. He only notices it now, bright yellow against aqua blue and almost painfully small. He turns to look back at Drift and Swerve. “I can’t believe you called him.” 

They smiled tightly back. “Thunderclash _is_ the mech who offered to watch you,” Drift admits. Ignis just looks at him, betrayed. 

You’re _never_ supposed to call the babysitter.

As Thunderclash leads him out of the bar he flutters his spoiler wings rudely at them. Ignis congratulates himself on the subtle burn, satisfied by the idea that he can call them ‘draft draggers’ to their faces and not get in trouble. 

“Where are we going?” He asks. 

“The bridge.” 

“Why?” 

“Because Nautica commed me angrily while I was there to tell me that a bar is not an appropriate place for a youngling.” He sounds miffed. It makes Ignis giggle. 

“Bars aren’t bad,” he argues. “Most of ‘em think you’re cute and give you free drinks and stuff.” He spots a glimpse of himself in a window; blue and yellow and red catch his optics and hold them as they pass. He looks so small next to Thunderclash. Fragile. “My carrier took me to them all the time before you kidnapped me.” 

He wonders where the colors came from, since he's sure that, whatever color his Matri is, he isn't blue.

Thunderclash makes a rumbling sound. Ignis takes it as disappointment in his carrier, which irritates him, and they spend the rest of the walk to the bridge in silence. 

Stepping onto the bridge is weird. On the other ships he was rarely invited up there, since it was mostly Command's area, and he's always stuck himself to the crew dregs. Adults are funnest when they're drunk and belligerent, at least on the cool ships. The bridge crew greets them with a smile. There’s only six of them, including the Comms mech with the bad taste in music. Ignis lets Thunderclash lead him to the captain’s chair, where he’s settled down on the floor next to it. “Don’t move,” he’s told, “Read your pad.” 

Ignis snorts and settles down cross-legged on the ground. He leans against the chair, careful of his spoiler, and flips through his pad again. “I’ve already finished my homework,” he complains. “I have to show Matri I’m done so he unlocks the next module.” 

“Read something else.” Thunderclash sighs. He starts to fill out his own datawork, glancing up now and again to keep an eye on the crew. “I do not need to entertain you at all times.” 

“Matri gives me things to do.” 

“I am not your carrier.” 

“I know. Because if you were you would give me something to do.” 

“I’m not letting you blow anything up, either.” 

Ignis hisses. Brainstorm would have, he thinks. Brainstorm is way better than Thunderclash. 

He clicks through the pad until he pulls up the recordings list. Secure pads don’t allow mechs to hardline up to them, and they don’t have wireless connection at all. Mostly this means that when Ignis wants to listen to the recordings Excelsior uploads to the pads he has to listen to them out loud or not at all. 

It takes him a second to decide which one he wants. His carrier likes to upload everything he thinks Ignis might like, even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense or takes up a lot of space. This, for Excelsior, spands from documentaries about humans to sunrises on strange worlds, to storytime videos for when annoying captains put him on the night shift and he can’t tell Ignis a bedtime story. 

The pad flickers when he picks the newest bedtime video. Matri grins up at him through the screen, his front denta chipped where he’d gotten punched in a fight. He’s pale pink and white, the color he was on the _Barisa_ , the left side of his helm painted in traditional grey Terruka patterns. 

Ignis touches his own helm and sighs. He misses those. They were so _cool_ before Excelsior made him paint over them. 

In his head he whispers, “Hi Matri.” His carriers grins back as the video begins to play. 

“ _Hey bitty,_ ” his carrier says, “ _I’m probably at work or something, afthead captains and all that. You know how it is, right?_ ” He laughs. 

“Yeah,” Ignis grumbles back. A smile pulls at his mouth. 

“ _Anyways!_ ” He claps his hands. “ _I know exactly what story I should tell you! This is the same story I learned when I was your age. My carrier told me it, like I’m going to tell you._

“ _You see, a long, long time ago, when the Primes still ruled the thirteen tribes, a priest rose to power in her tribe. She was very young when it happened, only a little older than you are, because of a war with a neighboring tribe. They were constantly fighting, and the young leader was forced to watch everyone around her die as they fought._ ” Excelsior’s voice takes on that warm, rolling accent he has when he tells the really old stories, the ones that he tells Ignis he learned when _he_ was a sparkling. There’s a roughness to his vowels, a roundness to what are usually the sharp edges of his words, that Ignis doesn’t get to hear anywhere else. 

Thunderclash taps the top of his head. “Earphones,” he chides. “Be polite.” 

He huffs. “Wanna listen to my Matri tell me stories.” The recording continues to play. “Haven’t seen this one before.” 

“ _She knew she was losing the war. She didn’t know how to lead them. There was no one left to teach her. There were so few of them left, and their city was gone, warn torn and ruined, and so she picked up her people and left. She walked for three days and three nights, her people behind her, before she fell to her knees and cursed the sky. In her dreams that night Primus came to her and told her to walk three more days towards the rust sea and she would be granted a gift._ ” 

Thunderclash tugs on the top of the pad, leaning over to frown at him. “What story is that?” 

“Dunno yet. And you keep _interrupting_ me, you slagger, so I can’t figure it out.” 

Excelsior is holding something up to the camera now. It’s a really cheap camera, so Ignis can’t quite see what it is through the pixelization, but he thinks it’s a painting. “ _You remember this, right? The Matrix of Leadership. It was in your study materials last week, so you should. This is what he showed her in her dreams. He promised her that if she followed him, he would grant it to her, and it would show her the way to peace. They walked for three more days and three more nights, until they reached the edges of the Rust Sea. Red water stretched for eons in front of them, to the edge of the horizon. She looked at the dawn and in the patterns of stars and light she had a vision of a great tool.”_ ” 

Ignis groans. “It’s a _study story_ ,” he says. “There’s gonna be a quiz at the end, I just know it.” 

“Turn it up!” Blaster calls out. “Think I recognize that accent, but I ain’t never heard the story before.” 

“It’s one of those stories where they’re supposed to be a history lesson in disguise. Matri doesn’t get that I like math and stuff more.” He huffs again, but he can’t help curling against the side of the chair, ducking his helm under the arm. He turns up the volume obligingly. “Matri likes them though.” 

“ _She stayed there for three turns of Cybertron’s twin moons constructing that tool. Her people began to build a new home around her as she crafted, bent over a forge crease. They threatened to leave her, as those she lost on the journey had, running off to different tribe. They didn’t. They knew that when she was done, they would return home to victory. They trusted her to make up for her mistakes. Finally she finished it. That morning, when the dawn crept across the sky, she held it up and told her people, few as they were, ‘I have built the greatest tool ever rested in Cybertronian hands’. She declared herself a true disciple of Primus and lead her people, rejoiced in their finished mission, home. Primus, she said, had realized their prayers. She knew now how to bring peace to her people._ ” 

Ignis looks up when he hears smooth working servos around him. 

The bridge crew surrounded him, their optics bright. One of them kneels down in front of him, helm inching close to peer down at his pad. 

“ _She stepped into the ruins of her city with her companions behind her. On the altar of her ruined temple she declared herself Prima, first of the Primes to come. She said she could feel all Cybertronians, past and present and soon to come. In the morning she called for peace negotiations..._ ” 

It only takes him a moment to imagine what she could be like. Prima. The _first_ Prime, the awesome femme who made being a Prime a _thing!_ He bets she was beautiful. And brilliant. And she probably loved science too, just like him. 

His engine purrs happily at the thought. 

“ _And her touch let them speak to their dead, and the Praxians looked upon her and understood what their warring had done to both of them. They declared peace, the grievances that had lead to a war generations old finished, their dead long appeased_.” 

Ignis glares up at the mechs surrounding him. “Don’t you have work?” He grumbles. He’d never seen a plan backfire half as much as it has now. They’re not annoyed, they’re just entertained. 

Thunderclash shoos them off with a frown. “Get back to work,” he tells them. After a moment he settles back in his chair properly. “You may all ask him for a copy of the recording later.” 

“The answer is no.” Ignis cuts off any requests before they can form. They’re _his_ recordings, and his carrier told him not to share them with people. “You can’t.” He hisses at the ones who haven’t gone back to their posts yet. 

He receives several helm pats for his effort, and the tip of his finial tweaked. 

The recording ends with a soft, “Good night, sweetspark. Remember, I love you.” Excelsior blows a kiss at the camera. The shot freezes there, where his carrier's expression is one of placd exhaustion. 

For a moment the lights on the bridge reflect his face across Excelsior’s. His carrier's is the only face he’s ever seen in himself, the long straight lines of their noses and the angles of their optics, their blunt, narrow chins. His cheeks are rounder, and he has sharp helm points and flat panels attached to him helm, but he can see where welds would have attached them to his carrier. 

He wonders, but only for a second, where he got the flecks of red in his optics. Wonders what his Matri _should_ look like, if he hadn't mutilated himself, hadn't shorn away what Ignis is only now beginning to understand are identifying marks. He imagines, fleetingly, what it’d be like if they got to be a dumb happy normal family on some planet somewhere, or if they had their own ship and their own crew instead of constantly bouncing around. He thinks he'd have friends. A big, huge, sprawling family of aunts and uncles who'd love him and his carrier. A patraes to go with his matri. But it’s only for a moment. Ignis loves Excelsior too much to really want anything else. His life is the best he knows. 

Then Thunderclash opens his big dumb mouth. "Where," he asks, his voice a deep, warm rumble, "Did you find a story like that?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's like 1:30am, so this. This is not beta'd. 
> 
> I also really, really hate the bedtime story. I might go back and tweak that. But life is happening really soon and I wanted to get this on. 
> 
> That story will be more relevant next chapter.


	9. Chapter 9

Ignis considers the question for a moment. He imagines all the truths he could let loose, and the lies he could tell, trying to determine which one would help him more. He leans forwards, tilting his head back to look up at the Captain. “My carrier was told them,” he says simply. “They’re myths. Sort of. History-myths.” 

“Can I see them?” His voice is soft and low and sort of rumbly. Ignis likes it.

The mechlet looks at him consideringly. “Only if I get to sit in the captain’s chair, and only if I get to hold it and show you. You can’t touch it.” 

Thunderclash stands and pats the chair of the seat. Around the room, mechs shift in their chairs, those who can turning to look at them. Ignis crawls out from under the arm and hops onto the chair, wiggling until he’s settled into it. His legs stick out straight in front of him and his shoulders are only a few inches above the arms, tiny form swallowed by the massive structure. It's warm and smells like good polish, which he likes. The captains leans against the back to look over his shoulder, hands resting on the arms of the chair. 

“Okay,” Ignis starts, clicking back to the index page. “So Matri made about a _bajillion_ stories - he does it for a living, you know? He writes so we don't have to be living off of crew wages, which are pretty much nothing anyhow - but they’re in three categories.” He points at the links under the _HisLit_ header, “History’s for, like, stuff that’s back up with facts and stuff, and some of it’s written in this non-Neocybex thing that I think Matri made up but some of it’s not. It’s like war stories and stuff. It’s where I put a lot of the really fun philosophy and biography books.” 

“There are some written in a different language?” 

He nods. “All the story ones are written like that.” He doesn’t bother to press the _Story_ link. It doesn’t go anywhere. Instead he scrolls through until the familiar smears of colors fill the screen, circles and bursts of glyphs overlapping each other. “It looks like this. This is the _How the Seeker Got His Name_ \- it’s one of my favorites! - and _The Unmaker’s Tragedy _which is kind of boring, and _The Moon Rolls Away _which is okay I guess, but I don’t like it very much since it’s made for really little bits.” He taps each colored text as he reads it.____

____“It ... It looks familiar.” A hand drops over his shoulder, point finger just brushing the screen. “A different form of Ancient?”_ _ _ _

____“Ancient what?” He slaps the hand away. “And I said don’t touch.”_ _ _ _

____Above him, he can feel Thunderclash shake his head. “How many of these are there?”_ _ _ _

____“I dunno. I guess like a couple hundred or something?” He flips through the pages again, engine purring. “Matri adds to them whenever he can so there’s a lot.”_ _ _ _

____“What else is on this pad?”_ _ _ _

____“Study stuff. Books. Matri’s serial series ‘bout this ship in space.” He frowns, clicking through the pad until he brings those books up. “You ever see those ones? The, uh, the _Knight Light_ series, the one about the robots in space on a quest.” _ _ _ _

____Someone on deck squawks. Someone else slaps the back of his helm, and Ignis snickers at the hollow sounding thwap. “It is ... particularly popular on board.” Thunderclash acknowledges._ _ _ _

____“I get to read all the rough drafts and stuff that don’t make it into the stuff on the shelves.” Ignis is smug. He _loves_ it when he meets people who read the story. It’s not that popular, but when it’s a hit he gets to brag that he gets to read all of the stories way before anyone else does. “I have stories no one else in the whole world can see.” _ _ _ _

____Thunderclash tweaks the tip of a spoiler wing. “That’s very nice,” he says, and Ignis preens. “...It comes to mind that I do not know what your,” he pauses, searching for the term, “Carrier looks like. May I see?”_ _ _ _

____Ignis tilts his head back as far as it will go to stare at him. “Didn’t you see him before?” He asks. “He was on my pad.”_ _ _ _

____Thunderclash shakes his head. “The camera was low-res. I would very much know like to know what the author of my, ah, my _favorite_ series looks like.” Ignis notices glances being exchanged across the bridge, but he doesn’t understand why. _ _ _ _

____Instead of questioning it he pulls up a photo on the pad. It’s one of the photos the crew on the _Barisa_ had taken for him, with Ignis and Excelsior together. It was taken from the side and below, because Szorians have a taboo about taking pictures straight on and they’re all shorter than Cybertronians, and it gives them both a strange look to them. Excelsior is holding Ignis on his hip, Ignis’ arms wrapped around his shoulders, both of them side-eyeing the camera. It’s at just the right angle to see the grey square where his spoiler hub should be. There are thin grey tubes there instead. Ignis has only ever seen his carrier flare up twice before, and he knows that that's how he does it, fire spewing from them in the prettiest show Ignis has ever seen. In the photo he looks soft and round, thin stretched out almost-oblongs instead of triangles, because he's long since sanded down all the points on his frame. He's pink and white, offsetting Ignis' grey and red. He'd wanted to be blue and red, but Excelsior had vetoed the colors almost before he'd gotten the chance to ask, so he'd settled for grey instead.== _ _ _ _

____Ignis isn’t smiling. Excelsior is._ _ _ _

____“Trekk took this picture,” he says brightly._ _ _ _

____“That is your carrier?” Thunderclash’s hand does touch the screen now, fingers trembling. “He’s missing parts.”_ There's horror in his voice, barely hidden but tightly restrained. _ _ _

____“No one to fix ‘em.” Ignis taps the place where he remembers, if only vaguely, the sharp shape of spoiler being. “He had winglets like mine but a pirate pulled them off when I was really little. An Ammonite,” he hisses the species’ name like a curse. “With a very sharp sword. And face things on his helm, too, I think, but I don’t remember those.” He knows the weld marks better than anyone. It’d taken him a long time to realize that they shouldn’t be there._ _ _ _

____“Ignis,” Thunderclash murmurs, “What is your carrier’s name?”_ _ _ _

____“Excelsior.” Ignis is very firm about it._ _ _ _

____He doesn’t know. It’s Excelsior right now, but when Ignis remembers being really young it was Solar Flare, and then it was Backlite, Treads, Backbite, Redstar, Bolt, Magma, Tailpipe. He’s been a lot of people. Right now it’s Excelsior, and that’s all that matters._ _ _ _

____“Is it?” The hand touching the pad cups his chin instead, tilting his head up. “Ignis.”_ _ _ _

____He narrows his optics. “It is.”_ _ _ _

____Thunderclash sighs. “Fine.” He steps away from the chair. Ignis doesn’t look at him._ _ _ _

____He’s not guilty he lied. It’s been a long time since he’s felt guilty for something. He just wishes he didn’t have to._ _ _ _

____\--_ _ _ _

____“Where’re we goin?” Hot Rod grins up at Bolt._ _ _ _

____It’d taken him hours to sneak out of the tunnels. He’d had to wait until Solar Flare left for the night’s races - which he’d only been told at the last minute was supposed to be a three day trip down to Polyhex, since the local races weren’t worth it - and he hadn’t even had time to down his ration for the day before heading out. He’d stuck it in his subspace instead. Then he’d had to crawl through a half-dozen capillary tunnels to lose the mechs assigned to watching the bits for the night, which had taken forever, and he’d crawled out near the meeting point already half exhausted._ _ _ _

____He’d perked right up when he’d spotted Bolt hanging around the roof awkwardly. The mech stood out like nothing else. The truck had jumped when Hot Rod sidled up to him and tapped his side._ _ _ _

____Now he frowns at the bit. “Did you get taller?”_ _ _ _

____He had. One of those minor growths that happened in the middle of the night, leaving his struts creaking and his plating aching from the stretch. He’d woken up with his sleep hollow filled with melted slag. He’d eaten it like soup and spent most of the sol cleaning the rest off his plating._ _ _ _

____“No. ‘Course not. Bots don’t grow.” He rocks back and forth on his peds. “Where’re we going?”_ _ _ _

____Bolt brushes it off. “There’s an insurrectionist meeting on Medietas and Robigo, the old library.”_ _ _ _

____“Illicit lit again?”_ _ _ _

____“Guerilla tactics.”_ _ _ _

____Bolt transforms. Hot Rod hops into his bed without prompting, ignoring the annoyed rev of his engine. “Let’s go!” He crows, patting the edge of it._ _ _ _

____“This is not going to be a regular thing.”_ _ _ _

____“‘Course not.” He pulls out his cube for the night, sipping the murky magenta fuel. It’s gritty but pretty good tasting. He smacks his lips a bit and waits for the fuel to settle._ _ _ _

____Hot Rod grins to himself, sprawling across the bed. For a minute he thinks he can see the stars._ _ _ _

____Nyon’s been swamped in pollution thick enough to taste since before anyone alive can remember. Whatever he sees, it’s never going to be the stars._ _ _ _

____It’s a short trip to the old library. It should have been pulled down years ago, and it probably would have been if it weren’t still in use, a massive behemoth of a building surviving solely on the veracity of ancient Cybertronian architectural skill. The domed roof had caved in at some point, the solar energy collectors long gone to rust. The twin doors are propped open with a cinderblock, but the only light let through is the strange, dim mix from too many biolights, a shade of not-quite white._ _ _ _

____Bolt drops him onto the floor as he transforms. Hot Rod lands on his feet, spoiler wiggling, and grins._ _ _ _

____“Let’s go then, little bot.”_ _ _ _


	10. Chapter 10

Rodimus runs a rough, wet towel over his plating. The primer comes off slowly, but he scrubs rougher, until the it feels like he’s scrubbing off his basepaint nanites. He’s trembling but ignoring it, denta gritted, optics closed. 

It takes what feels like hours to clean his helm and shoulders off enough to feel clean again. Years of repaints have left layers of paint between his armor plates, thick rubbery strips that fight coming off. He has to pick it out with his fingers, and even then it stays, gumming up his systems. 

When he’s done he packs the cloth away, twisting closed his small bottle of paint solvents. The cabin of the ship is flooded with an acrid, alcoholic stench, and he can’t do anything about it. 

He has to be down to his original colors for this call. There’s no fix for the frame adjustments he’s made over the years, but if he’s gone back to red and yellow he’s still got a good chance of getting recognized. He’d just have to be friendly. 

Making this call, he has to be desperate. 

It’s been two days since Ignis got taken. He’s never going to catch up with the _Lost Light_ before it hits Lork, and he can’t let them just drop his bit off - or, worse, let them _keep him_ because they think Rodimus isn’t fit to be his guardian - and he’s nearly run out of options. He can’t let them take him. 

The _Lost Light_ isn’t safe. 

When he answers, it’s to a face as unwelcome as a rock wall. “Rodimus,” the mech says dourly. 

Rodimus doesn’t grin back. “Wavelength,” he greets him. His fingers tap a staccato pattern on the arm of his too-small chair. “Get Censere. I need help.” He bows his head, gritting his denta for a second. “I need _his_ help.” 

The mech snorts. “And why should I?” They’ve never held any great love for each other. The other Autobot would let Rodimus rust if he could get away with it. But he owes him, and he'd never let anything happen to Ignis. Not after everything - everything Rodimus did for him, for Censere, and for the others tagging along with the Necrobot - that had led to Rodimus careening through space untethered, so that they may escape the claws of monsters by the scrape of their paint. 

Rodimus had given _everything_ to them to keep them alive. They owed him more than their time. He'd handed himself over to monsters for them. The least they could do, in his mind, is play fetch for his spawn.

“Because the _Lost Light_ took Ignis and I need him back.” 

\-- 

The mechs on the bridge have gone back to working. Ignis watches them, but whatever excitement his presence had brought has faded. It took hours for them to stop jostling each other over text messages, comms flying high between them. It's almost shift change when Megatron walks onto the bridge. 

“Blaster, comm up Excelsior’s ship.” He stands beside the Captain's chair. The medics trail behind him, sour faced and worried. 

Ignis perks up. “We're calling up Matri?” He stands and tucks his pad against his chest. “This isn't going to count against my time tonight is it?”

Velocity looks at him, kind faced. “No, sweetie, of course not. We’re going to talk to the captains about that, too. You should be able to talk to him when you want.”

“Medical emergency,” Ratchet tacks on. 

Excelsior answers the vomm, voice only. “What's wrong?” Static burrs across the line. 

“Nothing.” Megatron waves the question away. “We called for your ... expertise in sparking.”

There's a long pause over the line. 

“The Camiens know,” he tells his carrier quickly, words tripping over each other in his haste to spit them out. 

Excelsior coughs. “They do?” Then, muttered so low the mics just barely pick it up, “Of _course_ they do.” Louder, “What do you need to know?”

“Turn on the camera.” Megatron’s tone brooks no argument. 

His carrier hesitates for only a second before the camera clicks on on his end, the feed flickering and laced with static. He’s changed his helm again, magnetic attachments echoing the flat plates attached to Ignis’ own cheeks, though the points have a sharp ninety degree bend back, the tips pointed back and not towards the roof. The addition of a pointed chin attachment and an artful deco in black down his cheeks makes him look a stranger. Even the scars across his face have been painted to seem darker, deeper, the metal warped and knotted up instead of the neat, nearly invisible things he knows they really are. 

After all that, the fact that he’d poached Ignis’ paint isn’t a surprise. He looks good in butterscotch yellows and pale oranges. 

Or he would, if it were not Ignis looking at him. The bitlet has spent his entire life recognizing his carrier through his various disguises. Beside him, Thunderclash makes a questioning noise. 

“Happy?” His carrier grumbles. The overly-emphasized scars on his face twist in interesting ways. A short shake of his head looks like a gesture of annoyance. Ignis knows he’s testing the magnetic hold of the new finials, a nervous twitch he’d never quite shaken. A servo scratches at his cheek. “Look, what did you want to know? If you have your own Camiens in the know I don’t know why you’d need me.” 

Ignis watches him and hopes, for once, that he can catch him in a lie. 

The medics look between each other. Velocity steps forward. “Excelsior,” she begins, looking down at her pad. “We’ve noticed several... coding issues. In the crew. Frame anomalies.” 

“Their carrier and kin coding has been stripped.” He runs a hand over his face. “Do you want to fix that?” He interrupts them before they can get more than a burble of sound past their vocal processors, “I don’t have the code patches for that. Other than the physical you’re on your own.” 

Thunderclash tugs him into his lap, having reclaimed his chair while Ignis was distracted. “Is there no information you can give us?” He snuggles the bit to his chest, engine purring against him. Ignis can’t help but melt against him, frame melting to goop in his arms. The larger mech rests his chin on top of his vent crest. 

“One, put Ignis on the ground. He’s not a pet. Two, no. There’s no quick fix for this.You’ll have to figure it out on your own.” His optics narrow. Ignis can’t tell if he’s lying or not “Just figure out what you need to replace in the frame to get the process going and the rest should follow eventually. Coding patches itself after a while.” 

Thunderclash keeps hold of him. “He likes it.” 

Snorting, Excelsior shakes his helm. “Bitlet, get off his lap. You don’t know where he’s been.” 

“Oh, gross.” Making a face, Ignis doesn’t move. “I’m comfy. Maybe you should be here to _make_ me move, huh?” _Maybe you should have introduced me to other Cybertronians_. It’s not explicit blame, but Excelsior winces anyhow. 

“I’m not a medic.” Excelsior tells Megatron. 

Ratchet grumbles. “You don’t know anything? You carried one for Primus’ sake!” 

“And most mechs have no fragging clue how their fuel system works!” He's not shouting but he's close to it, bearing chipped denta at the screen. “I'm not a medic. Didn't have one growing up to teach us all this slag. I can send you over my specs to give you a clue about how it’s _supposed_ to look, at least in a Prion, but I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know what’s missing.” He presses his hand over his optics. His hand is purple-peeling-off-red, the long curls of paint flaking off at the movement. The fingers are strangely smudged where a rag-dipped solvent had smudged the paint away. 

Ignis glances down at himself, comparing the red of his thighs to the red of that hand. He shuttered his optics just to listen to his voice. It’s a cold voice, a voice he’s only ever heard when he’s talking to someone else. It’s not even the same way of speaking he’s used to - he misses that. The accent his Matri adopts when he actually cares about what he’s saying. 

“Ignis’ systems aren’t in line with what we know of Camien bitlets.” 

“You’re concerned.” Excelsior doesn’t sound surprised. “You shouldn’t be.” 

“Why? Something special about your brat?” 

Thunderclash is petting him. It feels nice. He’s the biggest being Ignis has ever been held by, and it feels like he’s little again, just a bitlet who’s finally scanned a vehicle. He leans his head drowsily against his chest and listens to his systems work. 

“We’re Nyan. Nyans create differently. We... Our systems are ‘calibrated for speed and damage absorption while functioning on low-intake fuel patterns.’” Ignis can hear the grimace on his face. He doesn’t like talking like that. He’s quoting someone. Ignis doesn’t know who it could be. 

“You’re used to starving.” 

“We’ve adapted.” He’s shutting them down before they can ask. Ignis wants to know. He didn’t know any of this before. “If he’s not screaming in pain he’s fine. He knows how to handle himself.” 

Velocity makes a screeching sound, her plating bristling. Her field lashes out like thorn whips, scraping against Ignis’ plating almost painfully. “That’s-!” 

“I would have you not tell me how to raise my sparkling.” Excelsior spoke over her. “We are _not_ some coddled colony mechs. Ignis is the bitlet of a pirate and he knows how to take care of himself.” 

Ignis nods. 

“He is still a sparkling!” 

“Nyans are never sparklings.” 

“I’m not helpless.” Ignis wiggles out of Thunderclash’s lap. He stands with his hands on his hips, puffing his plating out to make himself look larger. 

His carrier looks at him, and his cold expression melts. His optics, Ignis notes, are just a few shades greener than they were when he’d left him on Cyrillia two days ago. “Bit,” his carrier says, “Why don’t you go check out the engines?” 

“You don’t need to make up excuses for me to leave.” Ignis side-eyes Megatron and the medics. “I know you’re gonna say something weird.” 

“It has pictures.” 

“They’re pictures of me.” 

Excelsior inclines his helm. The smooth-edged stumps of his chevron are momentarily bared to the screen. “You really want an eyeful of your own baby pictures?” 

“I’m adorable.” 

His carrier smirks. “‘Kay, bitty.” His attention returns to the medics, whose anger is only just barely constrained. “You need information on Ignis’ systems?” 

Ratchet lays a hand on Velocity’s shoulder. “His rate of growth is off for what a ... sparkling his age should be experiencing. By all accounts he should be a fourth his size smaller. His nanite levels are too high. His firewalls are a joke. His frame is denser than it should be, and I have no fragging idea what you were thinking but he’s _riddled_ with illegal and ill-fit mods.” 

“...Ignatious.” 

Ignis hunches his shoulders. _Oops?_. “That’s a lie?” He hazards. He glances down at his hands. “Um. They were legal where I got them?” Really, they weren’t, but the techno-organic crewmate he’d had install them hadn’t been too concerned with legality. Zimurrak was cool like that. They’re still penpals and the mag-digits are awesome. Some of the other stuff didn’t work alright, but he figured that was the cost of getting them free. 

“Remove them.” Excelsior drums his fingers on the comm unit. “All of them, as soon as possible.” He shakes his helm. “I’d say you’re grounded but you’re already on slag duty for the rest of forever.” He sounds too tired to be angry. He runs a hand over his face again and sighs. “Send me a list of whatever slag he’s done to himself.” The chuckle that escapes him can almost be called nostalgic. “Still not the end of the world, considering the chop-shop I did on myself when I was his age. Bits are resilient.” 

Velocity looks personally offended. 

Ignis darts out of the room. “Gonna have to catch me first!” 

If he can convince Ratchet and Velocity _not_ to remove his mods - to make it so troublesome they eventually give up - then he’ll get to keep them, because it’ll be stellars before Matri decides to go see a mechanoid medic, let alone a Cybertronian one. And he wouldn’t trust anyone but a Cybertronian after some species else botched the job. That’s just how his Matri works. Even if he’d liked to pretend he didn’t, some part of him still thinks Cybertronians are better. He’s just waiting to prove it. 

He ducks between Megatron’s legs and laughs when the grab the leader makes for him misses. The door’s closing but not fast enough, and he slips through tight enough that the doors scrape the paint off his shoulders. He activates his mag-digits with a flick of his wrists and scampers up the wall, questing hands searching out a ceiling panel until he finds one. 

The ceiling is roomy, and clean, but it’s also out of the way and not exactly where people expect you to be. 

When he was younger, much younger, he remembers the ship he was on being attacked by pirates. Matri had bundled him up in a tarp and told him to be quiet. He’d pressed a chunk of hot, energon soaked metal to his mouth and pushed him into a vent. He’d told him he would be back soon. It took days for him to return. Ignis remembers the way the pirates had jeered outside the vent, the way their hands had clumsily scraped at the vent just out of reach. How scared he’d been. 

Ceilings are safe. 

He crawls through them now, but his mapping software doesn’t let him know where he might be on the ship. He’s just wandering aimlessly. 

He turns a corner and comes face to face with a pair of glowing, bright red optics. He stares. The bot stares back. He begins to shuffle backwards. “Uh, hey there. Robot. Person. Thing?” 

“...You, little scraplet, are not meant to be up here.” The robot slinks forward, his engine rumbling threateningly. Ignis notices, almost absently, the fact that this bot does not have hands. In the low light cast by optics and biolights, he can see the way his claws gleam. 

“No...?” Ignis hazards. He looks over his shoulder. “But I’m not happy with them right now so I’m hiding.” He rests his weight on one hand and raises the other to wiggle his fingers at the mechanimal. “They want to take away my mods ‘cause they think I’m too young for them.”

The mechanimal shuffles closer on his stomach. He has a muzzle, Ignis realizes, and he says, “You’re a _cat_!” He giggles delightedly. 

“...Yes.” The cat snorts. Then he tilts his head, not as if listening but in curiosity, optics flashing a lighter red, almost pink, as he buzzes his field against Ignis’. “You wish to escape them?” 

“Well I don't want to go back.” He huffs. 

The mechanimal curves sinuously within the ths confines of the ceiling, bending almost in half as he does so. Ignis watches eoth wide optics. “Follow me,” he commands imperiously. 

Ignis could do nothing but. 

\--

Hot Rod walks next to Bolt, his claws curled into the seam of his hip and waist armour, into the old abandoned library. There's dozens of mechs there, including a thin cyclebot checking bots at the door. 

“For Primus, thirteen,” Bolt says. The cyclebot lets them through, waving them by with a smooth sweep of his blaster. 

“Do you always have to give a password?” Hot Rod hasn't seen them at any of the other rallies he'd attended. 

“Only for these.” 

Hot Rod nods. These meetings must be more dangerous than getting caught with illegal essays. 

Slowly the pair circles the room. “These are the mechs you know’ll have your aft if you need it.” Bolt tells him. He's introduced to more models than he's seen before - cyclebots and huge semi trucks, off-roaders, minibots - and, conspicuously, no other Tunnel mechs. He catches the optics of matte-painted mechs across the room and they make a point to avoid him. He winces and ducks his helm. 

They won't approach him, but he's in trouble. They must be gathering information for the archives, and they can't do that and run rank on him at the same time. 

Bolt lays his hand on the top of his helm. “You done?” 

“No.” Hot Rod is carefully organizing all the new idents in his comms list. He twitches his helm to get the hand off and rises up on his tip-toes as if it would allow him to see above the crowd. “When do we start?” 

The mech he’d just been introduced to, a thin, wiry, stretched out looking minibot, smiles at him. “Racecars, right? Guzzlers can’t sit still for anything.” He means it as a joke, but no one laughs. It’s not really funny. 

High Roller, appearing out of the crowd, hits the minibot on the shoulder. “Hey! No shapism.” 

The minibot - Geargrind? Geartooth? - tilts his head back and scowls. “Yeah, yeah,” then, looking at Hot Rod again, “Sorry kid.” 

Hot Rod shrugs. “I don’t see what’s wrong with that.” His cheeks puff out. High Roller steps past the minibot to greet Bolt with a soft knock of their foreheads. The bitlet drinks in the ways their fields meld against each other, momentarily blindsided by the unhindered affection between the two. 

There are no _conjux_ in the tunnels. Amica, between Racers, but nothing like this, a warm melting affection that leaks from their fields. 

“You’ll learn. Little things can mean a lot.” The two trucks separate. “And it’s about to start. C’mon, I grabbed us an area up front.” They don’t touch as they push through the crowd, Hot Rod gamely following them, but they don’t need to. The mechs part for them. Hot Rod wonders at the sorts of mechs he’s attached himself to. 

“What’s gonna happen?” He asks. 

Bolt answers. “Usually for these we talk tactics. Demos, example sort of things, we get shown those too, and then we practice. Talk basics. Couple a us’ll get pulled out for missions and stuff.” He scrubs the top of Hot Rod’s head with his knuckles. “Welcome to insurgency headquarters, brat.” 

Hot Rod leans into the touch. “ _Awesome_.”


	11. Chapter 11

Ignis peers out of the ceiling, down at the prowling form of the cat below. “This interesting?” 

The felinoid looks up at him. “You would find it interesting.” He rasps. 

After a second’s hesitation the mechlet scoots through the hole. He hangs from his fingertips for a second, looking down, before dropping to the floor. The first thing that cates his attention in the room is the holos against the wall. The room is shaped like a lopsided tetrahedral, the largest wall to his left constantly flickering through videos of mech. He recognizes some of them. Most are strangers to him. The wall opposite the video is covered with still holos. Above them, in sharp angled glyphs, he reads _In Memorium_. They are pictures of the dead. The others are covered by more holos, by things pinned in frames, by trophies claimed and set on pedestals or left standing. 

It’s a large room, but Ignis feels crowded by all the things in it. People have left little bottles of glowing energon, rich, the kind he doesn’t get to drink often enough, _innermost energon_ , on shelves beneath each photo. Most have at least one. Some have more. Some have a lot. 

His tank clenches with a sudden surge of hunger. He tears his optics away from the shelves upon shelves of food and back to the cat. “Why do I want to be here?” 

The cat slips by him, shoulder rasping against his waist, his tail whipping sharply against Ignis’ cheek. “Look at the wall, little mech,” he says. 

Ignis does. “What am I looking for?” 

A warm muzzle nuzzles his hip. “Look closer.” 

The bitlet steps away from the touch, suddenly uncomfortable with it. His optics trace down the line of faces, of names. “Why do they put the bottles of energon out?” 

“To mourn. The fools think it feeds the dead.” 

He nods. He reaches up to trace the bottom edge of the holoframes, mouthing the names as he goes along. Intel. Crosscut. Ammo. Jackpot. Trailcutter. Rodimus. “How did they die?” Most of the bottom row mechs have more energon than the higher rows. Only the last - only Rodimus - has two bottles, one larger than the other. The corner of his photos has a strip of gold across it, where the other photos are blank. He looks up into the bright, angular blue optics of the mech and feels suddenly very sorry for him. He must not have been well-liked when he died. “Who was he?” He asks, tapping the photo. Something begins to bloom in his mind, something about the tilt of his optics, or the shape of his smile. 

He’s startled by the sound of something behind him. 

He turns towards the door, optics wide, and the jerk of his hand sends the bottles crashing to the ground. Energon spatters across his peds. 

Drift glares at him from the doorway, one hand on the hilt of his sword. “What are you doing in here?” He asks, “Ratchet is looking for you.” 

Behind him, pressed against the backs of his legs, Ravage growls. 

“I’m not going back to have them rip out my mods.” Ignis steps out of the mess of energon, doing his best not to cast longing looks at it. What a waste. He glares at Drift instead, flicking his magdigits on, readying the servos in his legs for a jump into the ceiling. “It’s not _right_. They shouldn’t be able to do that.” 

“It’s about keeping you safe. Ratchet just wants you healthy.” He moves his hand from his sword. 

Ignis shakes his head. He doesn’t understand. Ratchet doesn’t _know_ him. You can’t care about someone you don’t know, not really. He isn’t even crew. He isn’t _anyone_ to them except an unfortunate accident and an unwilling source of information. “I’m fine!” 

“Your mods are dangerous.” 

“Says who?” He tilts his chin up challengingly. 

“Our _medic_. A mech you should trust.” He takes a cautious step forward. 

Ignis jumps forward, heels hitting the screen of a holo. He bounces off the wall and into the hole he’d left on his way into the room, scrambling back up into the ceiling. Ravage follows at his heels. 

“Get down from there! Ignis!” Drift does not yell so much as intensify his voice. It’s an interesting effect. 

Ignis leans out of the hole long enough to stick his glossa out at the mech before he’s crawling through the narrow space again. The cat squeezes past him, tip of his tail hitting Ignis’ nose, and leads him forwards. 

“Well,” the mechanimal rasps, “that went rather swimmingly.” 

Ignis snickers. “You’re funny.” 

“Oh, the greatest of praise.” 

\-- 

They watch the mechlet flee the room. Excelsior slams his hands down on the console and screams, “Catch him!” as the boy turns spoiler on him. 

His spark seizes in his chest. 

Megatron raises one hand to his helm but Thunderclash is faster, activating his personal comm to command the rest of his ship to chase the wayward bitlet - to chase what he is beginning to suspect is _his_ wayward bitlet. 

A sharp motion has the rest of the bridge crew following Megatron out. 

The _Lost Light_ is a largely automated system. Clearing the bridge for a short period won’t hurt anyone. And it leaves him alone with Excelsior. 

With Rodimus. 

He turns optics on the mech he had once spent his off-shifts with, processors quietly cataloguing the differences between this frame and his last. The missing finials make him wince. The scars make his spark sink to the bottom of its chamber. His lover had gone through far too much on his own. 

He cannot bring him home. 

“Is it you?” He asks. Then, “Don’t answer that.” 

Rodimus bares his teeth at the screen, optics flaring white-green. “I wouldn’t.” He crosses his arms over his chest, revealing that damning purple-over-red paint. He has a feral look to him, sharper than when he’d left, like all the softness had gone out of him. It’s a tight, desperate, _hungry_ expression. 

“Is he mine?” 

“I’m not answering that.” 

He remembers nights in his habsuite, the lights set on dim as he’d held a purring, post-coital Racer on top of him. They’d watched strange Earth movies, and Rodimus would snarl softly every time he’d asked a question about something the former Prime had thought was obvious. The way he’d muffle laughter against his shoulder when he’d ask something he thought was particularly stupid. 

How, when Thunderclash had tried to ask him to stay he’d stiffen in his arms, turn away, growl his engine. 

He was beautiful in his anger. Thunderclash had let him go because he’d thought he’d have the time - 

“Come home?” 

Rodimus shakes his head. He runs his thumb along his jaw. “I won’t.” 

Thunderclash swallows the static building in his voxbox. He thinks, and thinks, circling around the idea of Rodimus-as-Excelsior and Rodimus-before-Excelsior, around Ignis and him and him and Ignis, but he can’t come to any true conclusion. Time had taken his son from him. His son! He hadn’t even known he could _have_ a son. 

Fuzzy memories of his youth, corrupted by time, tell him that once he might have. The thoughts are fleeting. He’ll never know for sure. 

“Why?” 

Rodimus sets his jaw. Thunderclash recognizes the expression and wonders how he could ever have thought the mech a stranger. “Because I don’t want to, _Captain_. They voted me off the island -” A human reference, Swerve would know it, “And I’m not heading back just so a bunch of colonists can tell me how to raise my damn bit. I like travelling.” 

“Is this the best for Ignis?” 

“ _Don’t fragging tell me what’s best for my son._ ”. Rodimus hisses. 

“He’s my son too!” 

“He’s not!” He slamps his fist against the top frame of the screen. The stream flickers and fritzes before steadying again. “He’s not. He’s my son. I carried him, I raised him, I taught him about his home, I kissed his scrapes and I loved him and you didn’t even know he _existed_ before yesterday.” 

“You didn’t _let me_.” He tries to keep his words calm. It’s hard. He knows he should be angry. 

“Nyans don’t -” He stops himself. Even now he can’t talk about his home. 

Thunderclash wonders if it’s regret or just the fact that he’s not Ignis. That he’s not part of whatever Nyon actually was to Rodimus. “I just want you to come back to the _Lost Light_. Please.” 

“Go find my son, Thunderclash.” 

He steps out of the frame. 

Thunderclash gets the message. 

\-- 

Hot Rod watches as the leader stands at the head of the crowd. High Roller had swung him up to sit on his shoulders at a quiet request. He wasn’t the only one - minibots here were either pushed to the front or given boosts by their friends - and it makes some warm and melty seep into his spark chamber. 

“Who is that?” He whispers. 

Bolt answers. “Igniter. Mech’s the biggest force behind the insurgence. He started passing around revolutionary essays a couple thousand years ago. Helped figure out the smuggling routes we used to use before the Tetra’s blocked them off in Ream 457.” 

“Aren’t those really dangerous?” Hot Rod stares at Igniter. He’s red. Handsome in that way that outsiders are, features kind of blunt but strong. Hot rod thinks that he’s probably some sort of hauling truck. Maybe a semi or a repurposed emergency response build, like a firetruck. He hasn’t seen enough mechs in his life to tell the subtle differences. 

“Yeah.” High Roller pats his shin. “Listen.” 

Igniter clears his voxbox. He has the air of ceremony about him, like this is how he begins every meeting. “There is history in the struts of this city,” he says. “And I intent to preserve it.” 

Whatever else he might be saying, Hot Rod can’t hear it. 

He remembers his carrier, sharply, suddenly, like a daypurge memory, talking about his sire. A mech who’d set him on fire. 

There’s no _conjux_ in the tunnels. Coding issues. They’re all too closely related. Only a certain number of bitlets are allowed to be framed every vorn, because of population concerns, and only with outsider mechs that have beneficial coding to offer the tunnel dwellers. Sometimes mechs move aboveground and give up on bitlets because they’ve fallen in love or something, but most of them just use the Nyons to breed. It’s easier. Less messy. 

And then sometimes mechs like Hot Rod happen because mechs like Solar Flare fall in love and spark and create without permission. 

When he was smaller Solar Flare was gone a lot more often than the other mechs. Punishment. He’d had to race in other cities to make up for the energon Hot Rod was consuming. He’d had to work so much harder than everyone else because of him, because he didn’t want to get rid of him. He’d given up being an Archiver to have Hot Rod. 

Because his sire was the kind of outsider that couldn’t be trusted with the secret of bitlets and sparking and history. 

Because Igniter wasn’t _good enough_. 

“Hey, mech, lighten the hold.” High Roller scolds him softly. 

Hot Rod almost jumps. “Right,” he whispers back, and tries to relax his frame. He watches the rebellion leader and tries to understand how his carrier could have fallen in love with him. He doesn’t see it. 

Suddenly, fiercely, he thinks, _I never wanted him in the first place_. 

It doesn’t make him feel any better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really short chapter because finals and stuff :/


	12. Chapter 12

Hot Rod sticks close to Bolt and High Roller even after the meeting breaks. He doesn’t feel comfortable around so many strange bots, for all that he’s one of the more daring explorers in his generation. He’s spent too long being told how unsafe it is to let down his guard now, surrounded by strangers and not a tunnel mech in sight. 

This time they don’t seem to mind it. Bolt lets him not-quite cling, hovering by his hip and chattering at the people who approach them. After the meeting it seems to be more of the before-meeting stuff. 

“Is all they do talk?” He asks High Roller. The mech laughs, and idle fingers scratch away more paint along his jaw. It looks strange now, like he has some sort of disease. He needs a touch-up but Hot Rod’s sure that they don’t have the credits for paint to do it with. 

“We’re taking a bit of a break,” he admits. “These meetings can’t all be business!” He laughs, scrubbing his hand over the top of Hot Rod’s helm. “We’ll probably end up debating our next moves in the city after this. Dividing up jobs again, make sure that no one’s getting leaned on by out-of-towners. See what people are saying.” 

Hot Rod ducks out from under the hand, grumbling. “Alright, so we’re debating.” He glances around furtively. “My ... Mentor,” he’s not actually sure that that’s what the abovegrounders call their carrier-like bots, but it’s something he’s heard around in the tunnels, when the older bots are talking about the forged mechs, “Says that there’s a lot of unrest in the other cities right now. That it’s getting less safe to go around and do things ‘cause the Senate’s cracking down in Tarn and stuff.” 

“We’ve been hearing that from the convoy classers too.” High Roller shakes his head.

“Iacon’s still pretty clear,” Bolt chimes in. “I was down there maybe a year ago? Don’t think the pamphlets are even getting handed out. Even the graffiti's being scrubbed off as soon as the Decepticons can make it.” 

Somebot, a short cycleformer that’s probably an inter-city messenger or courier class, snorts. “Decepticons.” 

“Hey, don’t be like that!” A construction frame scolds him. “They’re doing their part.” 

“‘ _Peace through tyranny_?’ That’s not doing their part! That’s - that’s dangerous elitism with a different face. It’s going to end up with the Decepticons taking the Senate’s place!” 

Hot Rod frowns. 

He doesn’t know if that’s true, but it sounds plausible. The Ratioists came before the Functionalists, and they got pushed out of power because the people didn’t like the way that the Ratioists balanced power. Then the Functionalists got corrupted and now the Decepticons were gonna kick them out of power. 

“Government’s corrupted,” he tells High Roller. “That’s just life.” 

Bolt looks amused. Some of the other bots glance over at him. “Then how do we create a government that works? We can’t be lawless, and we can’t fracture the planet apart - we’d end up never doing anything but going to war with each other.” 

“But competition is good!” Hot Rod huffs. “It’s not like being a whole united planet’s done us any good, is it?” 

“So you’d rather we go back to the clans times? Nothing but tribes and chiefs? The cities would never have been built if we couldn’t collaborate. Millions of inventions that have helped botkind would’ve gone undiscovered because bots can’t collaborate when we divide them by citystate.” 

Hot Rod jerks his head towards the last speaker, optics narrowing. _Igniter_. “So? We’re not much better off now than we would have been if we’d stayed separate states, right? Because if people can’t do things _now_ , because the government won’t let them, then it doesn’t matter what we’ve lost ‘cause...” His nose scrunches up. “Because in the end, in separate states the people will have more control, and freedom, than now, and that freedom means that different things would have been made.” Tapping his hands on his thighs, he leans against High Roller. “If war’s what’s gotta happen then war happens, since at least it’s not against our own bots.” 

“But we’re better off right now than we would be if we were simply Nyon, alone. Before, the Senate used to fund things like the Acropolis and the libraries; the combined power of the cities allowed us to stand in the universal arena unchallenged.” 

“Only because no one’s tried! We’re _not_ stronger as a whole, we’re just ...” He spins his wheels. His thoughts slip away like so much silicone sand, granules of lessons he’s never _really_ paid attention to. “The only time anything’s worked is when we only have a few people, you know? So even if the Decepticons take over the Senate or whatever they’re trying to do, nothing’s going to change because we’re just going to end up in the same place again.” 

Igniter nods. There’s a grin splitting his faceplates, his optics a shade of excited cyan, as he crosses his arms over his broad chassis. The lights set into the tops of his shoulders blink a cheery yellow. “But how can we prevent that and still show a united front to the rest of the universe? We’re easy pickings, when we’re divided.” 

“Why does the rest of the universe matter!” He presses his palms over his optics. There’s green glowpaint caught between the joints of his fingers. 

“Because the rest of the universe has very large guns.” 

“So we make treaties! It’s not that hard. I don’t know why we can’t have the smaller states and still cooperate with each other.” He scowls, scrubbing his hands over his face. He can feel his face flushing with heat, frustration and something more making him draw his armor plates in. 

“Then how will that be different from a united Cybertron? What changes?” 

Hot Rod can feel his spoiler rise, the sharp corners hitching up over his head and trembling. Then he slumps, tension draining out of him. “... I don’t know.” He should. He’s done _so much studying_. He should be better than this! 

Someone rests a huge, rough plated hand on the upper edge of his drooping spoiler. The field of another bot flutters against the edges of his own, warm and steady with confident exhilaration. “You did good,” High Roller says. “This the first time you’ve tried talking about this stuff?” 

“Thought about it a lot.” He looks up at the mech, optics a soft shade of cobalt that makes Hot Rod feel warm inside. “About what things used t’be like, and how they _should_ be.” He leans into the touch on his spoiler, warmth diffusing through his frame. “But you thought it was good?” 

“Your ideas have merit.” 

Hot Rod looks up at Igniter. He has to tilt his helm back to look him in the optics, mouth set in a mullish line. “Yeah?” 

The mech only grins wider at him. “Yeah. C’mon, let’s see if we can get some of the others to pick up where you left off.” One of his denta is chipped, and the others discolored strangely pink. “The others’ll pick up your argument and see where it goes.” 

Hot Rod nods, but plasters himself to High Roller’s side. He doesn’t like Igniter, and he doesn’t plan to. “Fine.” 

Igniter seems to get the message, stepping away. He doesn’t stop smiling. Hot Rod kind of wants to punch him in the face. “Just keep your audials on, okay?” 

“I get it.”

Bolt lifts him up, hands under his arms, and rests him on one of High Roller’s shoulders. “Better vantage point,” he says, patting the top of his foot. “Point us out to a good one, yeah?” 

Hot rod isn’t entirely sure what a ‘good one’ actually is, but he nods anyways. Then he settles in for a good, hard listen. 

It’s not as fun as he wishes it were. 

\-- 

Ignis watches the cat slink in front of him. His helm tilts, optics dimming. The former captain’s face keeps slotting itself into the mechlet’s already chaotic thought trees. He deletes the first few threads it starts, but only the first few. Instinct tells him to look, then look again. He moves on automatic as he lets his thoughts bloom unencumbered. 

After a moment he pauses. He can hear the rest of the ship’s crew below them, and the sounds of something else in the vents in the distance. They know the system better than he does, probably. It won’t be very long before he’s caught. 

His arms are trembling. He pauses. Vents deeply, cycling through the air that’s been trapped beneath his tightly clamped plating. “Who was the captain?” He asks, and his voice is steady. 

The cat pauses. Ignis realizes he’d never gotten his name. Should he have asked? “Your carrier,” the cat admit. “You’re slow. Thought it was obvious.” 

“That wall’s for dead mechs.” 

“We thought he died. The DJD had him. Torturers. They don’t usually leave survivors.” His tail lashes out, the sharp barb on the end scratching the inside of the vent. 

“They didn’t go looking for him?” Ignis can feel his plating clamp close to his body. His lips pull away from his denta and he swallows a keen. His carrier was a captain, once. He had an actual _crew_ , and he was a CO, and he was probably happy all the time. 

“He did not endear himself to the crew.” 

“That isn’t - they shouldn’t have left him because they didn’t like him.” Is that it? Did they just _not like him_? 

“Rodimus -” 

“That’s his name?” Ignis licks his lips. He leans back on his haunches, back bowed in observance of the low ceiling. 

“Hot Rod, actually. Before he was a Prime. When I knew him he prefered Rodimus, though.” The cat turns in the narrow space, red optics to blue. “The crew voted him out of the captaincy. He made bad choices. He got people killed because of those choices.” 

“Everyone makes bad choices. There was a war. He spent most of his life fighting while other people made his choices for him.” Probably, he doesn’t say. It’s more likely than it isn’t, that Excelsior was a soldier. There aren’t any civilian Cybertronians left.

“They do.” Those keen red optics keep watching him. He can’t read the feline’s faceplates. “Your carrier made more than most. He chose to go off on his own. The DJD sent out a video to show us that they had him. They made him record his last words. We thought it was obvious.” 

“You should have looked.” Ignis glares at the cat. “Why didn’t he come back? If he escaped the D-whatevers, why didn’t he come back here?” 

The cat snorts, a sharp release of his vents. “We left him behind. I doubt he was so charitable of thought towards us after that.” 

“He could have come back.” 

That curious black head tilts. “He could have.”

“Except...” Blue optics dark, Ignis shakes his head. He doesn’t understand. If Excelsior - if _Rodimus_ \- had thought of the Lost Light as home, he should have come home. But he didn’t. The mechs here seem nice enough, better than most of the other crews they’d ridden with, but they’re nosy and they don’t know about simple things like myths and bitlets, and they like to put their noses places. Rodimus hadn’t told them anything. Rodimus probably lied to everyone about where he came from, like he’d lied to Ignis, or like he’d just never said anything. 

Matri doesn’t trust them. More than just them being strangers, Matri knows them and knows that they’re not safe. Ignis tilts his head down to look at his hands, then back up. He checks his fuel gauge and decides that he has enough for auxiliary systems to online. Heat blooms on his palms as electronodes spark to life. He’s taken out larger beings than the cat with them. He’s not sure he’s safe anymore. 

A lot of things would have been better if they’d lived on the Lost Light. Even if they’d abandoned him they could have - they could have had a place to recuperate between ships. They could have had a _home_ , even if Rodimus hates everyone on the ship, even if it’s dangerous and full of dangerous people. It’s not like this is the first ship where the crew’s been full of bad people.   
Even if Rodimus hates Cybertron and Cybertronians, being here would have let Ignis learn _something_ about the place he came from. Instead he doesn’t know anything. 

“Where are we going?” 

The cat turns tail and continues through the air vent. After a moment, Ignis follows. The hiss of his hand against the cold metal almost startles him. He sends the dead-code, and the tazers in his palm hiss before shutting down. It hurts, but only a little bit, the barest traces of smoke seeping out from behind the armor panels. “To meet some friends of mine.” 

“Why?” 

“Because we all need answers, brat.” 

Ignis watches the cat go. After a moment he follows him again. “Who are the DJD?” He asks. They both ignore the static clinging to his voice. 

“The Decepticon Justice Division. They kept the troops in line during the war. After it their leader, Tarn, he joined with Deathsaurus to head the newest iteration of the Decepticons. Galvatron... failed.” 

“Who’s Deathsaurus?” It sounds like the coolest name ever. Ignis bets he’s the coolest bot ever, too. “Is he, like, a dinosaur or something?” 

“How do you-” 

“Earth stuff is in.” 

“Well, no. He’s a dragon.” He sniffs delicately. “And he _was_ a rogue Decepticon with a stolen War World -” 

“But I thought the DJD did justice stuff? Doesn’t that mean they don’t like traitors?” 

“Stop interrupting!” 

“Sorry.” 

“And yes. We don’t know _why_ Tarn agreed to ally himself with the rogue, but we assume it was a consolidation of power with Deathsaurus, who claimed the Decepticon name but not its leader, Megatron.” 

“That sounds like splitting wires.”

“It is.” The feline snorts. 

“What’s your name?” 

“Ravage. Stop asking questions.” 

“But how am I supposed to know what you guys want to know if I don’t ask questions?” 

The barb at the end of Ravage’s tail presses against Ignis’ mouth. He shuts up. “We will ask you.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IM RLLY DRNK RN

He’s only stepping out of the bridge when Megatron comms him. “What?” 

“He’s escaped into the air vents. I’ve sent in Skid. I’m heading back to the bridge.” 

“Understood.” He glances back at the empty screen. “Rodimus?” No one answers him. He must have left the bridge entirely then, or he’s ignoring him. Either is likely. The bot’s an utter brat; a hundred and twenty three years wouldn’t have changed him that much. “We’re closing in on Ignis.” He says, just in case. 

After a moment the Comm console ping. He checks on it. Ignis’ specs - though how Rodimus had managed to retrieve them Thunderclash doesn’t know, since he bitlet couldn’t have gotten a scan from an actual medic before. Not if he’s telling the truth, anyways. 

He hadn’t realized how good Rodimus was at lying, before now. How much between them, how much of the bot himself, was actually real? How much was simply... the construct of a mech caught in the remnant webs of Functionalism, unwilling to let secrets loosen from his processors during war? Would he have ever told them the truth? 

No, Thunderclash is sure, he would not have. 

The specs unfold on the screen. He checks the datastamp date, and they’re older than they would like; these must be from the Ammonite medic. They’re... unusual, though he can’t say exactly why that’s so. The fuel tank set for solid metals is larger, of course. An internal forge sits just below the spark chamber; nanite production, when he opens system diagnostics, plateaus at a higher level than most mechs, with strange jumps in-between, but if were a pirate those spikes could well likely be injuries. He shares a spoilerhub design with Rodimus - 

\- Including, he notes, an ignition system, though it remains inactive. The blasters on his arms were frame originals, which sooths a worry he hadn’t even realized he harbored, and active at only half power. He wouldn’t be a problem for any of them if he decided to fight. He copies the file over to the ship’s datanet, tagging it ‘officers only’ to keep curious and impolite optics away from it. 

After a second’s thought he pings Ratchet. “If you haven’t caught the brat hang up.” The medic snipes at him. 

“I have his creator’s records. The can been accessed on the medbay console.” 

“Good!” The medics cuts the line, though not without sending over a ‘blurp’ of soundless, discontent data. 

Thunderclash sighs. He rubs the back of his neck, fingers soothing the aching seem between his helm and the top of his spinal column. He glances up at the screen, but his once-lover has not made a reappearance. In the reflection of the console he can see the entranceway. “Megatron.” He greets the mech standing there. 

He walks onto the bridge. Old joints whine, a soft sound in the quiet room. “...You would think,” he says after a long moment where the two old, tired enemies can do nothing more than watch the screen, “That he would realize he needs more than a repaint and a helm adjustment to trick us.” 

“The rest of the crew has little idea.” 

“Only because the rest of the crew believe him dead.” 

Grunting, Thunderclash continues to sort through the info pack. The decision had felt like the best, at the time. Who would have believed Rodimus escaped the DJD on his own? That he had done so without striking a nefarious deal was a chance so small it didn’t bear mentioning. Whatever else, discovering that Rodimus was fluttering through space stations and publishing books, of all things, rather than contacting the _Lost Light_ to tell them that he yet functioned had convinced both of them that mentioning any chance of his living to the crew was a bad idea. He had made his choice. That they were not sure that it was him writing the damned Knight Light series had settled the matter for both of them - he was dead, as far as Cybertronians were concerned. Let him remain that way if he wanted to. 

No one had missed him. Few had mourned him. Thunderclash had convinced himself that it was the best for all involved with the mech. 

He has never felt such deep regret before. 

He does not mention any of this to Megatron. “How long do you suppose he’s kept the secret of evolutionary production to himself?” He asks instead. “That he did not feel safe even after the war was over...” 

“I have no doubt the inkling that such a thing existed in Nyon helped spur the Senate into action. I would not be surprised if that datapad the - that _Ignis_ carries holds more ancient knowledge than all the remaining dataslugs, depositories, and caches across the universe and Cybertron combined.” He shakes his head. “And neither of them would understand what they are in possession of.”

Thunderclash sighs. He pulls up the Knight Light series on the console, flicking through the titles with absent-minded familiarity. There must be hundreds of installments to the long standing series, thousands of fan pieces trailing behind it on the galactic information network like spiders and drag silk. He wonders, momentarily, at the similarities between the characters on either ship. What had Rodimus changed to suit his story? What had Rodimus changed without even realizing he had? 

Two storylines - two worlds filled with so many people - trace their way through the narrative. In one, the new captain of the ship the _Knight_ , with his former pirate and poet partner, forge their way through space with the help of an ancient map and Seer visions. In the other, the disgraced former Captain, whose place Thunderclash’s character had taken, fights to return in shame to his home planet. 

It’s not beautiful. It’s too blunt to be like that, rough and heedless of what it’s saying. It rambles and falls into tangents that last entire arcs. The goal of the story was lost a long time ago. If he didn’t know that Rodimus had written the series, if he had not suspected it with a scepticism so weak as to be non-existent, he would have given up on the books as the rest of the crew had. But he knew. Not even Megatron had been so convinced, but he’d known. He’d known from the first Earth reference, the first time his character had been described, arrogant and kind and thoughtless and far, far too thoughtful all at once. It had been a mess of contradictions only Rodimus could have created. 

He sends back his favorite book over the line just to spite the mech for leaving. Or maybe to show that he’s been watching all these years. That he’s been watching, and waiting, and hoping that the wanderer would find it in his spark to wander back towards them. 

Rodimus never had. He guesses he knows why, now. 

“We did not show him that either side of the conflict deserved to know. Could we have handled this information so soon after the war?” 

“No.” Megtron shakes his head. He only has optics for the screen. “What worries me is who else Rodimus may have deemed worthy of this information.” He presses his hand to his face, dragging it down in a rare show of exhaustion. “We haven’t heard from Tarn in quite some time...” 

Thunderclash sighs. “You think that he passed on what he knows to Deathsaurus’ Decepticons?” 

“Why else would they be so quiet for so long? They’ve been chasing us for decades.” 

“Only to stop for _sparklings_.” Thunderclash snorts. “Why would they think that reason to stop?” 

Megatron tilts his head, optics a bright crimson. He seems amused. It’s not as rare an emotion as it once was. “I _have_ heard utterly fascinating rumors about Tarn and Deathsaurus,” he demurs. 

It startles a laugh out of Thunderclash. “Oh, to be a spybot on that wall.” 

In response Megatron scowls. “I,” he grumbles, “Never wanted to think about those two interfacing.” 

Off screen, there’s a crash. Someone yelps. 

The two captains smile at each other. Someone, it seems, is listening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Im rlly drunk rn so its short. okay so 
> 
> there's maybe four chapters left 
> 
> we're gonna tie up loose ends with what happened with rodimus when he left. were gonna figure out ignis fate on the ship. then were gonna git 
> 
> theres two choices after the end - prequel, where we see rodimus and thunderclash relationship develope and the break from the ship and all that fun shit, or we can continue onto the linear story, or we can follow both of them through time that we skipped over, ignis being born and thunderclash and megatron growing close as friends 
> 
> all of these should be covered but which order is imprtant
> 
> also we could do one about just rodimus and nyon too so which one do we want?


	14. Chapter 14

Ignis watches the other mechs in the small, well-lit habsuite. There’s only eight of them, bright colored bots bristling with far too much weaponry, but they are much larger than he is and he finds their crowding uncomfortable and unwelcome. Something - he’s starting to recognize it as something that has an origin with _them_ , but his sense of it is tangential at best - something buzzes across his plating unpleasantly. 

Being part of the crew doesn’t make you loyal, or good, or safe. It just means that you’re stuck in small, enclosed spaces together for long periods of time. 

So Ravage slinks around the room and Ignis watches all of them with the kind of optics that some of them remember from colder times. Deadend optics. They watch him back. Ignis recognizes one of them, the blue and yellow one, but it doesn’t make him relax. He palms heat, the electric coils tingling. 

“What’re you want?” He asks. Pre-digestive seeps slowly from the valves at the back of his jaw, and he swallows convulsively. The phantom feeling of that spike pressed to his lips makes the metal itch. 

“Hey, mech, no need for violence here. We just have a couple of questions.” One of them says. His red face is twisted into a smile, warm and kind. Ignis doesn’t trust it. “We’re all friends here.”

“Sure we are.” 

“We are.” The blue and yellow one says. “I’m Nightbeat, and these are Ammo, Sureshot, Diveboard, Rad, Sky High, Toxin, and you know Ravage.” Ignis nods cautiously. “We just...” Optics meet around the room. “We just want to ask some questions, mech.” 

“Then _ask_.” 

They glance between each other again, comms flying in conference, before Nightbeat speaks again. “We have... a couple of questions about - about Cybertronian history.” 

Ignis shuffles and shoots them an impatient stink-optic. “Yeah? Not sure I have what you want to know, but you can _ask_.” He glances between them, but he can’t imagine what they want. Why would they want to know about something from _him_? It’s not like they can’t learn about all these things on their own. He’s just a kid. 

They glance between each other again. One of them rubs their hands together, and a nervous engine whine underlines the otherwise silent room. “Why?” Sureshot blurts out, optics too-bright and hands shaking where they’re clenched in his lap. 

“Why what?” Ignis watches them. Hunger, lingering from the splash of energon that had scattered across the floor of the trophy room not a half hour before, stirs. He thinks, _prey_ , and hopes that they can see it. 

Nightbeat slaps Sureshot across the back of the helm. He yelps, and then Nightbeat looks at Ignis and say, his tone even, “We want to know why, if the Senate were -” He pauses, looking for the right word. Ignis waits. He watches as the mech grinds his jaw, optics dulling in thought. “Were changing history, how you know all of this. The stuff that came after the colonies left.” 

“I don’t know.” He stares them down. The best kind of lie a person can tell is one they believe in. He’s been made a liar his entire life. Excelsior made him a liar. 

He could tell the truth. He could. It would only be five words, simpler than anything he’s done since he accidentally stowed away on this ship. It would make him a traitor to his Matri, to Excelsior. He doubts his carrier would speak to him again. He thinks he wouldn’t have to leave again, and they would keep him, and wouldn’t that be great? All he wants is a home. 

But he doesn’t think he will. Ravage knows who his carrier is, but Ravage, he thinks, won’t tell. Not if he hasn’t already, anyways, and it seems like he’s known since forever who Excelsior really is. 

“Your, what, your progenitor never tell you?” 

Ignis stares at them. Then he takes his datapad out of his subspace, the scratched metal cold against his palm, and holds it out to them. “Everything you want to know is in there,” he says. “But you won’t be able to read it, and neither can I. I have to be taught.” He watches Nightbeat reach for it, then pause, and Ammo snatches it away finally. “The reason the history of Cybertron was lost is because no one wanted to remember it. Matri told that. People want to forget the things that don’t fit into the right narrative. People only remember what makes them feel good.” He watches as Ammo flicks through it. “I only know the parts that I’ve been taught because the people who wanted to remember had to keep it safe.” He ignores the worried clench of his spark as the mechs crowd around to read it. 

“Why?” One of them says. The light from the datapad reflects in smeared rainbows on their faces. 

“Because the Senate killed them for not letting themselves forget.” 

It’s quiet for a while. Ravage curls at his feet, strangely complacent as he watches the small group send pings back and forth, curious and excitable. Outside the room Ignis can hear people running through the halls. 

“They’re cold constructs,” Ravage says after a while. “They were made with all the knowledge they would be taught about Cybertron. The MTOs - Ammo and Sureshot - know almost nothing about Cybertron.” 

“Like me?” Ignis hesitates, then rests his hand on Ravage’s warm, flat helm, between his ears. His tail wraps around the bottom half of his leg, barbed tip brushing his knee. “They don’t know anything about their home?” 

“They know less than you. Your carrier taught you. Many of the mechs on this ship did not have even that. They were onlined and dropped into battle before their optics were fully operational.” A shake of his head knocks his hand away, neck straining to look Ignis in the eye. “Do not pity yourself. You know more of your home than most any mech on this ship.” 

“I don’t know anything.” He holds his hands close to his chest, fingers worrying the paint on the packs of his hands. Teal blue is slowly scraped away to bared silver. 

“And that is what we have been reduced to. Almost nothing - and still more than any of the rest of us know.” He shakes his head. 

Ignis swallows, intake spasming, and he no longer feels hungry but only because he’s started feeling sick. “How?” He asks. 

Ravage yawns. “The Senate, just as you said.” He watches the small gaggle of mechs with little fondness, bent over a child’s book and whispering excitedly to each other. “We have been destroying ourselves for a very long time, little mech. Longer than even your carrier might suspect.” Paws cross as he settles himself in further. After a moment Ignis slips from his chair to sit on the floor, side of his hip pressed to Ravage’s ribs. 

“So they don’t know any of it?” 

“Your stories are nothing to us but stories. To you they might seem like truth, but your history has been scoured from our culture and your myths are nothing but nonsense. Our homeworld is a mystery.” He sighs, and the gusty feeling of his ventilation over Ignis’ plating makes him shiver. 

“You’re asking me something.” He says. 

Ravage is silent. 

He waits for the cold constructs to be done and sits in silence, thinking about the future. 

\-- 

 

Rodimus cannot remember the last time the tubing of his fuel pump felt as rust coated as it does now, rough and painful, as he sits just outside the bridge and pretends he’s not hiding from Thunderclash. He peels old paint from his lower body, and starts to clean it to pass the time, nothing but a bottle of sovents and a detailing kit at his side. He needs to pretend he’s okay. He needs Ignis back, of course, but Ignis is part of being okay now. 

Thunderclash is not. 

It’d been a mistake, the first time he’d stumbled up to Thunderclash’s room and demanded to be let in, even if he doesn’t regret it now. 

Ultra Magnus had stepped down as Captain that night. There was a party to celebrate Thunderclash taking his place, and someone had paid Swerve enough to get the bar hosted. That was why Rodimus had gone. He’d wanted to get drunk and maybe snag a bottle of Nightmare Fuel for his room, and maybe see how much happier everyone was without him as captain. It was a mistake. People were celebrating and he sat at the bar and glowered, downing engex until the world spun and he felt sick. Then Swerve kicked him out because he was bringing the mood down, and he’d spent half an hour stumbling through the halls looking for his new rooms. 

They’d given the old ones to Thunderclash. The captain’s quarters. Rodimus had been moved somewhere else when he’d lost the seat and Ultra Magnus hadn’t wanted them, and no one was willing to give them to Megatron, so the set of rooms had been left empty until Thunderclash had joined them. 

Rodimus had always assumed that, like the chair, he’d win the rooms back sooner or later. If he kept trying, he’d been sure, he’d succeed. Except that Thunderclash had come along and he didn’t. He’d never gotten the chance to get better, either, with him there. They didn’t need a new captain. 

But he’d still been getting used to the new quarters, which butted up against the engine hall rather than being near the bridge. The engex had taken him back to the captain’s quarters. 

He’d banged on the door when his codes were rejected. Then he’d yelled something because he finally remembered whose rooms they were now. It was something rude, he’s sure, but he can’t remember what it was.

The door had opened. Thunderclash stood there, avoiding his own party, optics hazy with exhaustion. They stared eachother down for a few minutes. 

But Rodimus had fueled on a lot of engex that night. His system, already stressed, were overclocked. He collapsed against Thunderclash, his frame shivering in his arms as weeks of stress and restless recharge catch up to him all at once, poor fueling habits leaving struts and processors hollow. 

Thunderclash caught him. Of course Thunderclash caught him, arms coming around him softly. His plating smells like standard issue Autobot polish and something else, sweet like ozone, and he’s warm as a furnace. The heat seeps into Rodimus’ plating and in stasis, as shallow as it is, he can’t help the purr his engine makes at the feeling. 

The captain sighed, and backed up with the speeder’s frame held close to his own. 

In the morning he’d woken up in his berth, still held close to his chest, systems purring with aching satisfaction. Nothing had happened. Thundercracker had held him, one hand across his spoilerhub and one cupping his hip, but Rodimus slunk from the room like the worst of his morning-afters. 

That was how they’d started - not with some drunken one night stand, which Rodimus could have excused, or a drunken tantrum, or a fight, but with Rodimus held in his arms as they slept - close and something almost like loving. 

Excelsior sits with his back to the wall and to the comm, and he doesn’t think about that first night, or the second, or the third, the echoing memory of warmth and hunger clinging to his spark. It should never have gotten as far as it had, he thinks now, optics cleared by time and distance. 

Idle hands trace blunted and long-smoothed weld scars, deadened sensors registering those steady touches merely as pressure. Beneath the plating he knows that more deadened metal lays, scars and wounds left to fester until the frayed edges of them rusted and closed on their own, and he uses the phantom pain to remind himself of why he doesn’t want to go home. 

Beneath his spark is the chamber where Ignis was formed, a hollow hole where his bitlet had hidden until he had outgrown the space. His bit had been quiet and smart and observant his entire life, cold sparked and kind despite that. A child soldier who never had to fight a war. 

He was going to be an archiver, someone to take everything that Rodimus remembered and bring back to Cybertron. He was going to be the smartest damn pirate Rodimus had ever seen. 

He was supposed to escape the damned war, not get dragged along in the ragged wake of it. 

Rodimus clears his vents, then scrapes at the dirt that had gathered at the seams of his optical sockets, stray bits of dried paint and dust. He only needs to stall for time. 

Just two days, he thinks, two days and it can be like none of this happened. Everyone can go back to pretending that he’s dead, and Ignis can forget the ship, and his bit will never realize who he is. 

\-- 

Hot Rod tilts his head to look up at the sky. The neon lights of the city scatter off the thick smog, and it lights up the canvas above him like a world on fire. 

There’s a weight under his plating from datachips glued there with epoxy pilfered from the factories. It should be light, but he can feel every one of them. The thought of getting caught slinking through Iacon’s backstreets makes his tank twist, but Bolt is waiting for him at the edge of the city and he needs to make this drop-off. If the site’s compromised, he reminds himself, he’s the only one fast enough to get away in Iacon’s unfamiliar streets. He’s the best person for the job. 

Hot Rod thinks about Solar Flare, waiting in the tunnels for him to come home from the creche, and tries not to let the guilt of not being there overwhelm him. 

Red peds splash through a puddle of weak acid and rust, and he’s forced to stop and kick the rest of it off before it seeps between his plating and ruins the chips. These aren’t even slugs. A bump in the wrong place could ruin all of them under a piece of armor, and then this trip would have been for just about nothing. 

From the shadows of refuse bins and bulky trash the dull optics of the desperate and hungry linger on his frame. He bares his denta at them, but they don’t have the intelligence to flinch back. There is no history of the stupid going missing here. There is no one who would eat them. He wishes he had more than a vibroblade at his side and walks on, wary in the maze of the backstreets. 

In Nyon the insurgence works from the skeletons of the old city, the root of their rage around them as they experience day by day what the Senate’s neglect has cost their people. They’re easy to find, if you know the old city, but most people don’t anymore. It’s just a shadow lost amidst the neon cast by factories and crumbling apartments. The smaller meetings are always raided before the main force is. 

Iacon isn’t Nyon. The entire city feels like a thin shiny veneer over something rusted and cracked, a sickness festering in the underlevels of the city. It makes Hot Rod step carefully. He can’t see the danger here, and it makes the ground underneath him feel unsteady. 

It means that the revolution here is scattered, not a gathered force but a fearful susurrus amidst the shining towers. It means that information needs to be brought in like this - one mech and fifteen different drops, to keep the information flowing along the complicated lines of the city. It means that Iacon is dangerous. 

Hot Rod breathes and tries to think about Solar Flare’s stories of the city, scarce as they are. He lets his fingers curve to claws at his side, already age-blunted, and pre-digestive fill his mouth. He can be safe. 

When he looks up he thinks he can almost see something, between the clouds, like light - but then something makes a noise and he tears his optics down and back to Cybertron. 

Throwing his shoulders back, he eyes the corner of the alleyway where the noise came from. It looks like there’s nothing but trash there, but when he opens his mouth to scent the air the sensors in the roof of his mouth detect warm metal. He lets his optics drift past it, rather than draw notice to the fact that he’d seen them. It’s probably a homeless mech. When he walks past them they shuffle, but neither of them acknowledges the other. 

He can feel his engine trying to shift gears, powerplant running on an anxious overclock. The maze begins to give way to straighter, cleaner streets. He’s moving through the industrial sector with startling speed, mapping software startlingly accurate in a place that doesn’t simply build on the corpse of itself. 

In the distance he can hear the low roar of a crowd. Engines scream. The smell of burned energon and overclocked engines swamps his nasal sensors. He can taste it, and the film of it settles in the back of his mouth where the miasma of Nyon usually soured his intake. 

He runs towards it. The way his peds hit the ground hurts, almost, even that different from Nyon’s soft, decayed and rusted roads. He barely notices it. There’s acid on the ground instead of dust, and it burns the edges of his plating where it seeps through his seems. 

In the distance the walls open up into a broad street. Bright painted mechs, clean and streamline, crowd into it. He comes out amidst them and grins, clever optics searching out the tell-tale purple and grey plating of his drop-point. 

Amidst the crowd his engine hitches and he can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. 

This is where he belongs - in a vorn or so he’ll be able to join the races, juvenile frame just barely able to keep up with the tamer of the races. Mechs will start looking for him. He’ll get a _reputation_ , if he works hard enough. If he’s fast enough. He’ll be an adult - and it’s exciting to really be a part of it already, even if he isn’t racing. 

There are Nyons in the crowd, but they don’t notice him. No one’s expecting a youngling to be anywhere near Iacon. He shouldn’t be anywhere near Iacon. This is dangerous. 

He slips through the crowd, clever fingers dipping into subspaces as he goes, filching credits and energon with silent aplomb. They’re only Iaconians, after all. “Where’s Doubletouch?” He asks a rich-looking noble. Under the dim lights his plating gleams. 

The mech looks down on him and sneers. “He’s lead,” he says, “You placing a bet?” 

“...No.” Rodimus scowls, slipping to the front of the crowd. Race lead heads the racers, dropping the track line down for the racers to follow behind. The tracks are secret until the race starts. It makes it difficult. It makes it _dangerous_ , which is just what the spectators want. Someone passes him a code on a datachip, and he plugs it in. 

The racer’s cams jump up onto his hud. He settles down to watch the race.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Sooo I lied about being done in four chapters. It's looking more like six or seven, depending. 
> 
> I'm sorry this chapter is so late! I just moved across the country (nearly the furthest distance I could get from California) and before that I was getting ready to move, and I just haven't had time to write.


	15. Chapter 15

He never gets to pass on his data to Doubletouch. 

One of the spectators straightens in the crowd as the lead, trailing several bright colored but oddly glowless racers behind him, turns the corner. There’s the shimmer of paint changing in the corner of his optics and he turns his helm to look - 

“Everyone down! Iacon enforcers! Desists and force will not be used!” Hot Rod’s too distracted to listen. Enforcers are spilling out of the alleyways, some still casting off scrap-shroud disguises. Hot Rod is running before the last word starts ringing through the crowd, darting between legs and under peds. 

It’s pandemonium. Mechs are screaming. The enforcers are shooting into the crowd, frames toppling over in bright blasts of laser fire. Hot Rod only just barely manages to break off from the crowd and duck into an alley, peds slapping against the ground and throwing up splashes of acid. He can feel the chips shattering under his plating, splinters digging into soft protoform. Harsh cusses spill out between pant of his venting. 

All that work for nothing! 

There aren’t any tunnels to escape into here. Nowhere for him to run but through the petrorat maze of the alleys, which are unfamiliar to him. His steps stumble where they should be sure, and there’s no lead to this race, no end point to follow. Even his training is useless. He doesn’t know _how_ to escape. 

Hot Rod can’t stop trying. He’s a contraband carrying mech in the middle of Senate-controlled space. 

He can feel his fuel levels dropping, energy flagging. He’s just not designed yet to go this fast, this long, but he can’t stop. He can hear someone following him. They’re on ped because the alleyway is too narrow and too filled with trash for vehicle mode, but he can hear the enforcer catching up. His legs are longer. His engine is more finely tuned. 

He never had a chance. 

Rodimus trips over his own peds, goes spinning aft over helm into the side of the alleyways. The crash rattles his processor. He can feel the way some of the plating on his back has dented awkwardly inwards, pressing against the protoform near his vertebral strut. He can hear the fizzing of his energon as it drips into acid. It hurts. The pain whites out his optics, and he can’t think and can’t make himself move. One big servo grabs his wrists, restraining him. His engine whines. 

A servo picks him up by the scruffbar. He stares into the officer’s eyes, denta clenched, and grins. 

The pain fades fast. “Got me.” 

“You’re under arrest for attendance to illegal street races.” Cool blue optics stare him down. Hot Rod wiggles his peds, pain fading fast. “Do you surrender yourself?” The mech holding him is blandly handsome in the way that cold constructed tend to be, but for the scar stretching from audial to audial, over his nose, several shades paler than the rest of his faceplate, and the purple cast to his blue optics. 

He grunts. “Ain’t going nowhere, am I?” The ‘bot has an interesting looking crest, all points, the only bit of color on his otherwise regulation white-and-black frame. He’s lowered down to the ground and then turned around, scruff bar released. He waggles his spoiler in the enforcer’s face to make it harder for him as he’s cuffed. 

Fingers pinch one of the tips, bending it harshly. “That’s enough.” 

“Ow!” He tugs his wrists uselessly apart, but the cuffs hold. “You gonna be takin me in now when alls your Enforcer friends ‘re out getting the real people?” The Enforcer just grunts and hauls him out to the street, where they have a good dozen more bots sitting on the sidewalk with their arms behind their backs and a trio of Enforcers standing over them, blasters drawn and ready to shoot. His Enforcer shoves him down, and Hot Rod goes because he doesn’t have much choice, does he? So he sits, acid rubbing off onto the sidewalk and onto the plating of the mech he’s forced to sit next to, who grunts and tries to shift away. Hot Rod feels his spoiler wings droop. 

Well, he thinks, and looks around. Well. 

He sits, and tries not to think about what being caught means when you’re someone and something not meant to be existing. 

He’ll be fine. He has to be. 

His Enforcer transforms and heads off to tag another racer. Hot Rod studies the mechs caught along with him, and he’s thankful to see that none of them are wearing Nyan glow paint. He’s the only one who was caught, then, and if they’ve gotten away from the track they’re probably home-free. The rest who are with him are just the spectators. More are being hauled over every few minutes, hanging off of the arms of white and black Enforcers. Most of them aren’t nearly as nice as his Enforcer was, because despite still stewing in acid he’d not been hit too much when he was caught. The same can’t be said for the rest of these guys. 

Something cold sloshes over his helm and shoulders. Without thinking about it Hot Rod flares his plating, letting the fluid run under his plating to wash away the slagged chips and the acid. He sighs as the niggling, aching burn he’d been sitting on for too long. He tilts his head back to grin winningly at him. The Enforcer stares down at him with cool optics. “Thanks!” 

“Don’t mention it. Really.” He turns sharply on his heel, and Hot Rod bends his spine nearly painful backwards to watch him go, doorwings held high in the air. 

“Maybe this won’t be my worse stay in jail.” If he can get the mech to contact one of the racers who’s meant to be in the city he might be able to get them to post bail before too many questions are asked. 

The mech next to him snorts. “Pretty little thing gonna seduce an Enforcer?” 

Hot Rod wiggles his warped spoiler wings. “You think I’m pretty?” He chirps, flickering his optics at the mech. 

The mech shoves his shoulders against his, knocking the mechling over. “Shaddup.” 

“Frag you too.” Another of the Enforcers, this one a truck model of some sort, hauls him up and then drops him on his aft. “Ow!” 

“Stop messing around,” the mech grouches. “You’re under arrest.” 

Grumbling, he shuffles around until he’s no longer sitting on the flat portions of his aft. “Yeah, yeah, like I haven’t been before.” Primus, he hopes Bolt catches on that they’ve been busted. He could use the huge mech getting him out of trouble again. 

\-- 

 

The rescue doesn’t come. The Enforcers have rounded up everyone they think they can catch before workshift and haul them onto a transport to the precinct. Hot Rod’s just glad that his Enforcer is riding by them, because it means he probably won’t get the oil beat out of him before they get there. 

It’s a longer trip through the city than he’d expected. The track must have been set out further than he’d thought. When they get there it’s more to look at than he’s used to seeing in Nyon. 

A three story building, it’s clean unpainted metal with an engraved sign over the door for the precinct number, with a garage in front for mechs to exit in vehicle mode and a lockup yard in the back in a cube of green-blue shielding. They drive the transport into the yard, and then one by one the prisoners are led out. Walked through the backdoor into the precinct, they’re stood in line for what, Hot Rod assumes, is processing. 

Which he can’t go through because he won’t be in the system. 

Hot Rod looks around furtively, shoulders hunched up around his audials. He needs a way out, and he needs it before anyone figures out he’s not supposed to exist. There are six Enforcers in the yard alone, but elsewise it’s just twenty-six soon-to-be convicts and the guarded gate outside, to which he doesn’t have the key. 

His Enforcer looks at him, hand on the blaster magnetized to his hip. Hot Rod is last in line, probably for his small size and the lack of any real charge against him. He’ll be processed, probably spend a night in a cell, and then be dumped the next day with a fine and a community service charge. Or he would, if he were a normal Cybertronian. 

Who knows what will happen to him. 

They don’t have people in the Enforcers so far out of Nyon. They have IDs for the racers who go topside, but other than the pre-reports he’s been mentioned in by the Nyan Enforcers all the times he’s been caught running info for the insurgency Hot Rod doesn’t exist. He suddenly, fervently wishes that he were decades older, because then someone would have scraped together enough that getting collared for a race wouldn’t be more than an annoying setback. But he’s not. He’s just a brat, and he’s too young to have left the city, and there’s no one coming for him. There was never anyone coming for him. He should have known better. 

His Enforcer rests a hand on his shoulder pauldron. “Come with me,” he says, and to the other officers in the yard, “I need to speak with this one.” They don’t question him. Hot Rod thinks that he has too much integrity for the other officers to think that he would ever pull something questionable. He goes without a fight. 

The officer leads him into the precinct, past the lines, and into an office. There’s a window without bars, and a plain metal desk cluttered with datapads and stray styluses. The trashcan by the desk is full of discarded energon cubes. The mech probably lives in his office. 

He’s pushed into one of the chairs in front of the desk. The enforcer leans against the front of it, arms crossed, doorwings bent up and back. He stares up at him and tries to give nothing away. 

The Enforcer holds up a shattered chip between his fingers. “This is yours.”

“I dunno what that is.” Hot Rod sneers and echoes the mech’s stance, spoilers wings going up and arms crossing. 

The Enforcer snorts. He tucks the chip under a bit of armor plating in his forearm. “I know exactly what this is, mech, and where it came from, and why you had it on you.” He leans forwards, mouth curved up at the corners in a smile. “After all, I’m your contact.” 

Hot Rod rears back in his seat, spoiler flapping against the back of the chair. “ _You’re_ not Doubletouch.” 

“I’m not. There was an unfortunate change in plans. One that required a last-minute change in contacts. We weren’t able to get in touch with your Igniter before your lot dropped out of contact.” 

“Either way the chips didn’t make the trip.” 

He flips out the stray chip again. “I only needed the one, little bot. Trust me.” 

Hot Rod snorts. “Sure.” The Enforcer leans forwards, and there’s a flutter in Hot Rod’s stomach as their fields brush together. 

“I’m going to send you back to your mechs, little one,” he says, “And you’re going to tell them that you safely delivered your cargo to Strikeout, yeah?” He chucks Hot Rod under the chin. 

“Y-yeah.” He rears back to escape the touch. “Yeah. But you have to get me out of here first.” 

Strikeout makes a soft, amused noise, before straightening and becoming the stalwart officer once more. “All I need to do is walk out the front door with you, Nyan. Come on, then. Stand up.” 

Hot Rod slips off the chair. A tap on his shoulder has him turning so that Strikeout can remove the cuffs, and when he does he rubs his sore wrists and rolls his stiff shoulders. “You’re just going to walk out with me? No one’s gonna ask what you’re doing with me?” 

“They’ll assume you’re my informant.” 

“...Is that safe for me?” 

“As long as you’re not in Iacon.” The mech snorts. He leads Hot Rod out of the room, one hand on his shoulder, and through to the front of the precinct. He folds down into vehicle mode, and Hot Rod follows after a second’s hesitation. “I’ll lead you out of Iacon and to your companions. A police escort is never a bad idea.” 

The drive is peaceful. 

Iacon is too clean, and busy, and bright. It’s nothing like Nyon, which is eating itself, falling to a soft sort of decay that has taken centuries, which is nothing more than the debri of history and industry with rust built upon it. Nyon feels real, to Hot Rod. Iacon does not. He eyes the other mechs around him with more than a little wariness. They’re too clean to him. There are no dents and no hungry optics, just mechs going about like droids. He doesn’t think they even look at the world around them anymore. 

Hot Rod stays near enough to Strikeout to risk paint transfers. 

It takes them almost thirty clicks to reach the edge of the city where Bolt and the rest of their small entourage have camped out. They’d come in through a hauling contract, and they only had the time to stay another night before they would be forced to head back with their cargo. 

As soon as Bolt catches sight of him he jumps up, optics pale as he rushes over to the two. “Hot Rod!” He yelps, scooping the bitlet up almost before he has a chance to transform. “Where were you? They said you got caught!” He looks over the bit’s shoulder at the Enforcer, expression dropping into something far more suspicious. 

Hot Rod squirms in his arms. “I’m fine, Bolt. Fine! Strikeout got me out. He even has the info we needed to drop off.” 

One big hand rubs his spinal strut, fingers gently massaging the tense cabling in his lower back. “He did, did he?” The mech’s voice is rife with suspicion. Hot Rod bangs a hand against his shoulder strut and glares at the others in the band. They’ve all transformed to stand tense around him. 

“Yeah!” He tries to shove himself away from Bolt. “Mechs, mechs, I’m fine! He was _nice_.” He huffs. “Lemme down, Bolt, I wanna say good bye.” 

Behind him Strikeout laughs. “You do, do you little mech?” 

Hot Rod slips out Bolt’s arms with a shimmy of his hips and a clever applications of fingers to his seams, darting out of the protective circle to stand in front of Strikeout. 

The mech is bigger than him. Hot Rod isn’t quite in his final frame yet, and won’t be for another forty vorns, but he’s close enough to what he thinks his final size will be that he’s not minibot sized, either. He comes up to the mech’s chest, face to his spark chamber, thinner and lighter but clearly no longer the sparkling he had been, when he’d met Bolt all those vorns ago. 

When the mech leans over, that pleased smile on his faceplates, Hot Rod smiles back. 

Nyons aren’t just racers, after all. 

He braces his servos on either side of Strikeout’s faceplates and presses a sweet, closed mouth smile to his lips. Then he darts back to Bolt, climbing up his suddenly still form to perch on his shoulder. “Bye!” 

Strikeout stares at him. Fields flair out around him in sudden intense hostility mixed with surprise. Hot Rod just feels smug. He pats Bolt’s helmcrest. “We can go now,” he says, “I said goodbye.” 

Bolt sputters. “You _kissed_ him.”

“He’s cute. I wanted a kiss.” He shrugs, spoiler wings fluttering. “I can want a kiss if I wanna.” He smiles at Strikeout, who’s still standing gobsmacked and half bent over still. “So I think we can leave now.” 

The mech straightens, features smoothing out into something stern but pleased. “And I can say that the Iacon rebellion will be happy to have you back, little mech.” He flutters his doorwings, betraying his pleasure. “You and everything you bring with you, as long as I don’t have to bail you out yet.” 

Hot Rod ducks down to look at Bolt. “Well?” He asks. “Are we making regular runs out here.” 

Bolt pats his thigh. “You aren’t. Mechs, transform and roll out!” 

“Hey!” Hot Rod yelps as they peel out of Iacon faster than petrorats from an Insecticon. “Hey!” 

“It’s not happening, mech.” Bolt snorts at him. 

Hot Rod clings to the roof of his altmode the entire drive home. 

\-- 

“Ignis!” Skids yelps as he shoves his head out a vent shaft. “There you are!” 

He looks up at the mech, curled up against Ravage’s flank. “Here I am. Are you going to make me go back to the medic’s? ‘Cause I’ll just run away again if you do.” 

“Captains are going insane looking for you.” The mech drops down into the room. The cold constucts jump back. The yellow one, Nightbeat, snorts. 

“Kid’s good people, Skids. Leave him with us, we’ll get him to the medbay soon as we’re done with his work.” 

“Can’t do that, ‘beat.” He stretches. “You’ve got him long enough.”  
“You gonna speak for him then?” 

“Don’t need to. His ... whatever he is, he’s still on the comm. Ratchet’s got his permission to pull his mods.” 

The cold constructs look between each other. “Fine,” Nightbeat says, and walks the three steps over to Ignis to drop his pad back into his servos. “You gonna be alright kid?” He asks, voice pitched low. 

“I’m not gonna let the dumb medics pull out all my hard work. Not even if I have to work for him for _forever_.” Ignis shoves the pad into his subspace. “It took forever to get these done.”

Nightbeat crouches in front of him. “Look, bot, I know you don’t have a lot of reason to trust us, but Ratchet’s a good medical officer. If you talk to him... Maybe he can fix the mods that can be fixed. At least then you get to keep a couple.” 

“I want to keep _all_ of them.” 

“Even the ones that hurt? Even the ones that don’t work? Ratchet could fix those, you know. If you talk to him.” 

Ignis leans his weight on his heels. He glances at Skids. “...If I go with you, do I get a chance to just talk about it first? No tying me down and knocking me out and just ripping ‘em all out?” 

He drops a servo to Ignis’ shoulder. “No, bot. I’ll make sure of it. But you gotta come with me, okay? Captains are worried about you.” 

He hesitates for just a second - but only a second. “Fine,” he grumbles finally. “Fine.” Then he slots his servo into Skids’ and follows him out the door. 

\-- 

 

They’ve pulled into a rest stop for the offshift. Hot Rod is curled up next to Bolt, systems synced, not far from the rest. His cheek is smushed against his chestplate, the rumble of his powerplant loud to his audials, and words built up like static in his voxbox. 

“Bolt,” he finally whispers. “Bolt, I wanna tell you something.” 

“Yeah, Hot Rod...?” He murmurs. His big hand pets his spoiler hub. “What?” 

“...I wanna tell you something really important. About me. And the city.” 

“Whassat? Can it wait ‘till onshift?” 

“Not sure I’ll be so brave on onshift. Just... My name’s Hot Rod an’ I was kindled by Solar Flare. And there’s a city ‘neath your city.” 

“What?” 

So Hot Rod whispers the truth to him beneath a canvas of smog, weaving a story a ten million vorns in the making and just four hundred vorns between the two of them. 

For the first time in his life telling the truth doesn’t feel like a betrayal.


	16. Chapter 16

It’s not betrayal, Rodimus thinks, if none of them were loyal to you in the first place. 

That’s the same thought that carried him through the last - however long it’s been. Forty years, at least, and probably three times that. 

It’s the only comfort he has now, hunched in the cockpit of a raided ship. It’s also his biggest worry.

The Necrobot sits across from him, Brainstorm’s stolen briefcase in his lap. He’s folded himself neatly into the space. His cape takes up nearly as much space as his frame. “Rodimus,” he murmurs. He looks very sad. 

Rodimus wants to punch him in the face. 

“I need you to get Ignis back.” He’s cleaned all the foreign paint from his frame. He was supposed to do a full detailing planet-side, but that was before his bit was kidnapped. The uneven regrowth of his paint looks bad, but he wears it with pride. “I don’t care what you have to do to do it.” 

“I can’t invade the Lost Light!” He snorts. “You know better, Rodimus. You think that they would let me go if I were caught?” 

“You owe me!” Rodimus slams his fist against the hull of the ship. “I gave you _everything_ , Censere.” Fire burns in the back of his intake. For a moment all he can smell is energon and heated metal, feel hands as they sifted through his internals, the rasp of a cruel voice against his ears...! “All I want is Ignis.” Censere shifts in the too small chair. Their knees almost brush. Rodimus can feel their fields intermingling at the edges, seething anger against awkward reluctance. “You’ve spent a century doing your work because no one could find you; because no one would hunt you; because I painted a very nice target on my back for you.” 

“You chose to do so. I did not force you. I did not ask you.” He draws away from Rodimus in both field and frame. Guilt creases usually serene features. 

He snorts and curls his hands against his chassis, swallowing a harsh snarl. It’s ugly, and he knows that it is, but he revels in the anger for a moment. 

There was never a choice. 

“I saved your life,” he says. “And you’re going to save the only life I care about.” 

Censere looks down at his briefcase. His hands splay over the top. He plays out an old low-Iaconian tune on it. “...three decacycles,” he finally says. “We have the energy for rescues rationed out, and I have planned out the next three decacycles’ worth of trips. After that I can retrieve Ignis for you.” 

Rage swells and crests and Rodimus allows it to wash over him. He revels in it for a moment, in the terrible way that he wants to rip apart the world for keeping his sparkling from him, for Censere’s refusal to give and and do what is right, give him what he is _owed_. 

He swallows it down and it settles in his tank like rust. “We leave tomorrow. For a ship. We need to be on that ship, Censere, I need to know that you can bring him to that ship by tomorrow.” 

Their savings are more perilous than Rodimus likes to admit; he has gone hungry more times than he has not, the last century, the kind of desperate, thin hunger he remembers from a long ago youth. It’s two thousand credits to obtain a contract, and they make scraps on those trips because Cybertronians are still largely reviled, which means that with medical costs and fuel and the learning modules he buys Ignis, with repaints and fuel costs and the price of always being on the move, paying out informants and access to news ‘pads, they break even if they’re lucky. The stupid _Knight Light_ series gives them a spare few credits, but never enough to skip out on a contract, and never enough to turn their nose up at good work. If they’re not on that ship then they’re probably stranded wherever they _do_ end up, and this ship doesn’t even have enough fuel to get them to Lork. 

“I can’t.” 

“ _Censere_ -” 

“You are asking to choose between the lives of mechs and your _separation anxiety_ , Rodimus! I can’t, I can’t just drop everything I am doing to serve you. I won’t.” 

Rodimus digs the tips of his fingers into his thighs. He hasn’t spoken to Censere in decades. This is not how he wanted to meet him again. 

“Can you get me to the _Lost Light_?” 

“What?” 

“‘Port me to the _Lost Light_ , then get back to the Necroworld. That’s two trips. We can figure the rest out from there.” 

“Rodimus -” 

“We aren’t friends, Censere. You owe me. And after this, we’re even.” 

The other bot looks saddened. Resigned. How many times have they spoken, this last century? Not nearly as often as they had before it. Censere hadn’t been a friend, but he _was_ someone who understood the world Hot Rod had been created into, if only tangentially. But that was a very long time ago, and they’re different bots now. Censere, with his planet and his people and his mission; Rodimus with Ignis and his own. They couldn’t remain what they were with the weight of debt on their sparks. The opportunity had passed. 

“...Rodimus,” he says. “I’ll take you there. But. Please, if you’re doing this, if you’re deciding to go _back_ to the _Lost Light_ , be careful.” 

“I’m always careful these days, Necrobot.” 

\-- 

Ratchet stood by the operating berth. Ignis sidles in slowly, ready to run at the slightest hint of a wrong move, with Drift at his back. 

“This isn’t what your creator asked of us.” 

“Frag my creator.” Ignis says mildly. He steps closer to the doctor. His helm tilts as he considers the room. “This is different than it is for organics.” 

“How would you know what an organic operating room looks like? Now get up on the berth, I need a better scan of your systems.” Ignis does so. Drift lifts him by his scruff bar to set him on it, and he wriggles until he deems it comfortable enough. After a moment he pops open a medical access port and Ratchet connects him to a scanning pad. 

“I used t’help some of the onboard docs.” 

There is silence for a while. Ignis starts to write out papers in his head. Drift taps out a quiet melody. Ratchet hums along quietly. Finally he sighs. “Well, most of these will have to be removed. They’re not compatible with Cybertronian systems - how whoever did this managed to get them to work as well as they did without killing you I have no idea - and with the problem located I can say with surety that these are part of your fuel efficiency problem. The magnets in your hand seem functional, but they need rewiring. I’m removing your hackmods, your tasers, your subspace, and those configs in your engine you probably thought would superboost your speed. Heads up: you would have blown up sooner rather than later. The lights in your helm, the lasers in your forearm, don’t think I missed those, they’re gone too. The organic tank can stay, but it needs reconfiguring, and your glossa isn’t compatible with the flavors.” He scrolls through Ignis’ specs, using a stylus to highlight suspected modded systems. “I assume the acid is original to your frame?” 

“I got it from Matri, yeah. For eatin’.” 

He grunts. Ignis leans over to look at the datapad. He straightens up when Drift whaps him on the back of the helm softly. Ratchet looks up at him. “Camiens don’t have this integrated into their systems. Is this a matter of frametype, or particular to you and your ... progenitor?” 

“I dunno. You’re gonna have to ask Excelsior if you wanna know.” He shrugs and starts kicking his peds against the berth. “I’ve always had it, probably? Always eaten like I do, anyhow.” 

Drift tilts his helm, optics narrowed in thought. He considers Ignis for a moment, then shakes his head. 

“Mng.” He removes the datapad. “Lay back on the berth. We’ll do this now, won’t take long, and then I can get you the Pit out of my medbay.” 

He does so. The berth is cold along his backstrut and uncomfortable on his winglets. He flutters them on instinct, and they make soft thwapping sounds with each hit. 

After a moment he feels another datapad plug into the medical port. 

The world goes black. 

\-- 

 

Drift leaves when Ignis goes down. Ratchet will call him when surgery’s over, and until then he has questions to ask. 

No one stops him storming through the halls. He’s not Third on the ship anymore - that’s Magnus - but there’s lingering respect even after half a century away from the ship. So no one stops him from storming onto the bridge. 

Thunderclash is still there, settled in the captain’s chair. The vidcom is dark and the bridge is clear, but for Megatron and Blaster. Drift doesn’t fool himself; they can’t trust Blaster. With a flick of his fingers he dismisses the mech, who flees the room with a grateful look. Being stuck with Thunderclash and Megatron can’t be fun. 

He looks between the two. Megatron looks back, optics hard, as he always has. Thunderclash just looks lost. 

“It’s Rodimus, isn’t it?” He snarls. His hands find the handles of his swords without thought, and he grips them until it hurts. “It’s _Rodimus’_ brat we have on the ship, it’s him chasing us, he’s - he’s _alive_.” 

Two pairs of red optics look back at him. He doesn’t know which he trusts less. 

“...We all knew,” Megatron admits, “Or suspected. We know those books, you’ve read them. We never had a frame to confirm his offlining. It was always a possibility that, after his betrayal, the DJD did _not_ murder him.” 

“Betrayal? _Betrayal_ We never even knew why he left!” 

Thunderclash sinks lower into his chair. 

Two pairs of optics fixate on him. 

“You _knew_ ,” they snarl at once. Only Drift tacks on an almost sarcastic “Captain,” at the end. 

Thunderclash runs a hand over his face. His field reads as nearly despondent, but it has since long before Drift came back to the ship. The only change has been in intensity; now he can almost taste it, like ash in his throat. “I-” He starts. He looks at the vidscreen. His expression falls. “I was fragging Rodimus. I thought...” He looks up at them both. “I am not sure what I thought. That we were in love. That he felt for me. That, as unhappy as I knew he was on this ship, he would stay to see the quest complete. With me.” He laughs, short and harsh. “Of course - he left. Probably because of me.” 

“You? You thought Rodimus would love _you_? Even I know that that wasn’t a good idea, and I wasn’t _here_ for it. He hates you!” Drift sputtered. “He’s always hated you. And you took his captaincy!” 

“I didn’t -” 

“He thinks you did. Because he hates you.” Shoulders slump. Drift wonders how any of them survived this long, considering that they’re being led by ... well. By them. He misses the days when he thought Thunderclash was an unshakeable force of good in the universe, rather than just another bot. 

The bot slumps. 

Megatron looks smug. “You’re an idiot,” he says. “One of the only things Rodimus and I agreed upon.” 

Drift stares. “You’re _besotted_ ,” he accuses. “And you still let him wander around like a criminal.” 

He coughs into his hand. Looks to the side. “I loved him,” he admits. “But he doesn’t return my affections. He never did. When he left I assumed it was because he... because this _ship_ was no longer where he wished to be, and without his Captaincy or the war there was no reason for him to stay. Rodimus is a free spirit. When we received the message from the DJD - when we assumed he was dead - it was... easier. When we realized that it might not be the case, but he never returned, never contacted us, I thought it was because he preferred himself thought deactivated.” He looks up at them both, now, optics wide and beseeching. “I wanted to respect his wishes.” 

Drift throws one arm wide, as if to gesture to the rest of the ship. “And now he has a bitlet and he is _terrified_ of you! Of us!” He struggles to remain calm. One hundred and twenty-three years since he had last seen his _amica_ , and less than two decades since the wounds he bore from their parting had stopped festering. 

Rodimus chose to stay away. It hurts like those first years after Wing had died, but perhaps more, because Wing hadn’t chosen to leave him. Wing hadn’t let him leave and then, when he could finally go find him, chosen to stay away. At least, he thinks with more than a little self-hatred, Wing had died. 

He stares down Megatron, who isn’t even looking at him. He’s looking over his shoulder, distracted by something else. 

“Who says I’m afraid of you slaggers?” 

Drift turns so fast he nearly trips over the back of his heel. Standing there - leaning against the doorframe, optics bright, looking more like Hot Rod than he has since he _was_ Hot Rod, smirking at them. It’s hard to tell, even now, if he _is_ Rodimus. All of his points have been filed away. Red and yellow blooms in ragged swatches across his frame. His biolights are dead. Even from here he can here his fans struggling, the brittleness of his plating, the dull crystal of his optics. 

He looks like Drift used to, before he’d clawed his way out of the Dead End. Angry. Exhausted. The kind of hungry that makes Drift think of dark alleyways and pink denta. 

“Rodimus.” 

“Not anymore. You should know better, Drift. About changing names.” He grins at them. The metal of his face twists oddly, and Drift realizes that it is because his face is covered in scars. He wonders if he’s leaning against the wall to make an entrance or because he can’t stand up straight. 

Thunderclash makes a short, low, strangled sound. Rodimus ignores him. 

“You’re back.” Megatron stares at him. 

Rodimus cocks his helm. Drift realizes, after a moment, that it’s because one of audio receptors is damaged. 

Primus, what happened to him? 

“Only for a bit. We’ll disembark on Lork. You’ll never have to see us again, don’t worry.” When he smiles Drift can see that he’s missing denta, and some of them are chipped. 

There’s too much damage to take in at once. 

Oh, Primus. _Primus_. His _spoiler_. 

Drift feels like he’s going to be sick. Maybe the others don’t recognize how painful that must be, because neither of them have spoilers, and neither of them have wings, and they aren’t racers. They don’t understand. 

He stares at his amica and can’t find it in himself to speak. 

“You’re leaving again?” Thunderclash asks. He slips out of the captain’s chair. His servos are trembling, Drift notes quietly. Megatron is only still, very still, and tense. “How did you get on the ship?” 

Optics shift from Drift to Thunderclash. He, if possible, grows more laconic. “You won’t see us again after Lork.” 

Drift can’t help but make a small, harsh, wounded noise. 

Rodimus glances between the three of them. “I’m going to track down Ignis. We are going to move into my old quarters. I don’t care what you tell the crew. Really, I don’t.” He turns and leaves. Drift only just barely hears him say, “It’s not like they were the ones left for dead.” 

He doesn’t follow him. He’s too busy staring at the ugly, ragged place his spoiler hub used to be. 

\-- 

"You won't tell anyone, will you?" Hot Rod asks Bolt. In the dark, it feels like he can ask these things. When daylight comes they both pretend that they know nothing. 

It's easier for Hot Rod than it is for Bolt. Only one of them is used to lying. 

Bolt looks at him, uneasy. He pats the 'bot on the shoulder. "...Yeah, Roddy. I won't tell no one." 

"Promise?" 

"If'n you tell me those stories? I'll promise you just about anything, you little bit of trouble." 

"Heh. Little bit." He grins. His optics seek out the lights of Nyon, which are just a glimmer on the horizon. He feels the call of home deep in his chassis, a longing for painted tunnels and painted mechs. "I'll do better 'n that. I'll show you. I'm gonna show you all of it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter left! After this one, we tie up (some of) the loose ends in preparation for an editing overhaul and writing the next in the series, which will include a more indepth look at the crew, Cybertron, and the last hundred years. 
> 
> Are there any pressing questions that anyone wants answered? Some won't be (for one reason or another) but sometime I get lost in knowing the narrative and can't see what I've left out.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I lied. There are more chapters after this one.

Ignis wakes up in the medbay to too-bright lights and the soft, reassuring sound of Matri scribbling away on his datapad. He onlines his optics slowly. Awareness comes slowly. The lights. Then color. A lack of a familiar ache in his struts, a HUD no longer in need of being cleared of cluttering ERROR messages. Matri is humming, and the soft tune fills the room with aching familiarity. 

After a moment Ignis sits up. He stretches the stiffness from his servos, then glances at his Matri. At _Rodimus_. The name doesn’t seem to fit. Not his quiet, hard-edged carrier, with his scars and his paints and his fire. 

“You’re awake.” Rodimus smiles at him. The expression is soft. “And in a whole lot of trouble, bitlet.” 

He looks down at his lap. His plating is scuffed; he’s starting to think he’ll paint himself green, soon, or maybe purple. Teal and yellow are starting to bore him. He looks at him creator and decides that red might be a good idea. Red and black, like a burning coal. 

“Did you know you were gonna have me when you left?” He asks. His voice is small. The words scrape the inside of his vocalizer raw. The question is abrupt, and it wasn’t something he’d planned to ask. He’s not sure if he regrets asking it, though. “Did you leave knowin’ we’d be running forever and ever?” 

There is a long pause. The silence that stretches between them has an unfamiliar weight; for a moment Ignis thinks that his carrier will withdraw, and all there will be is silence. 

“No,” Rodimus says. “No, I never thought that. It was only supposed to be a short trip, I wasn’t going to be missed. But plans... don’t go to plan, all the time.” 

Quiet again. Ignis digs the tips of his fingers between the outer seams of his thigh plating, near one of his flame spouts. He gathers his courage. His throat feels raw. “What were we running from? If it was such a short trip then _what are we running from_?” 

“...They call themselves the DJD. Called. They _called_ themselves the DJD. A group of soldiers tasked with hunting down traitors to the Decepticon cause. Do you remember the Decepticons?” 

“...yeah. The purple faces.” 

“The purple ones. There were purple-faces where I visitting that the DJD wanted, and I ended up being there. And they kicked my ass. Hard. Nearly killed me, and they probably would have, because I was telling ‘em slag about Megs that they didn’t want to hear. I wouldn’t be here if Deathsaurus, their new leader, hadn’t stopped them.” He leans over, setting the pad in Ignis’ lap. “He could - smell you, I think, or read your existence in my field, and it confused him. He didn’t know what you were. Instincts he didn’t understand were starting to control him. They didn’t let me go, but because he refused to let them kill me I was able to escape. But even escaping them - well. There are things out there that would kill us both for being alive.”

“You’re _lying_.” Ignis growls. He doesn’t, can’t, know for sure. But he knows. Like he knew on the bridge, like he knew the last time he tried to ask about his sire. He always knows. And he’s so _tired_ of it. 

“Yeah.” Rodimus shrugs. “Even the walls have ears, little bit. I lie. They lie.” He shrugs. Smiles. “Even the Primes lie.” 

Ignis stares down at his lap mulishly. He fiddles with the ‘pad. “Is this a new one?” 

“Less secure. For things you want to write. And the _Knight Light_ series.” 

“Oh.” 

The quiet lingers there. Ignis does not turn on the pad. Rodimus watches his creation, fields meshing, and allows the quiet to continue. He knows that this is, sometimes, what his bitlet needs. 

Ignis looks at his creator from the corner of his optic, comparing him to the Cybertronians he’s grown to know these last two days. “Do you regret it?” He asks. “Never comin’ back?” 

“Never.” Rodimus says with quiet conviction. “I love the life I had with you. I love the stars, and the travelling, and not being a soldier. Nyons don’t regret anything, little bit. Not ever.” 

“Why’d we never come _back_?” Static breaks the question into fritzing fragments. He tries to keep the whine from his voice and knows he doesn’t succeed. 

His creator traces images out on the berth. He cants his head, obviously deep in thought, before shrugging. “I didn’t see a reason to come back, bit. Didn’t feel safe to, for me or them. It was better this way. Didn’t have to suffer each other.”

“You were scared.” Two helms turn towards the wide medbay. Skids hangs half out of a ceiling vent. Behind him the sinuous form of Ravage slides out, landing with unnatural grace. 

“We were being chased by the scariest damn bastards in the known universe. I was _terrified_. All the time.” He tilts his chin up, defiant and unashamed. “The DJD, the Black Block Consortium, the Federation’s meaner breakaways, Decepticons and NAILS and _everyone else in the damn universe_ wanted my helm or my creation. I never stopped being scared because the moment I stopped was the moment we got _caught_ and people _died_.” 

Skids comes closer, wide opticed, to lean over the two of them. Ravage hovers at his heels. 

Ignis watches both of them. 

“You staying this time?” Skids asks. 

Ravage hops up onto the end of the berth, where there is plenty of room for him to curl up. Instead he lays across Ignis’ peds, helm and front paws resting in his lap. Ignis curls his hand against his neck and enjoys the contact. 

“Only until Lork.” 

“D’you wanna see the new ‘pad Matri gave me?” Ignis whispers to Ravage. He holds up the datapad, screen glowing pale violet. 

“No,” he drawls. “Now shush, adults are talking.” 

Skids nods. He doesn’t seem surprised. “You gonna wanna have this get back to Cybertron?” 

“My functioning or the slag I get up to on the ship?” 

“Any of it. You were my friend, Roddy. If you’d let me I still - you know, we were, and we didn’t have to _not be_ friends. We could -” 

“Let it get back to them. It’s - fine. It’s fine. We were always going to get found out.” He laughs, low and harsh and quiet, even in the empty room. “This just sped up the inevitable.” He slips off the chair, stretching. “Where’s Ratchet?” 

“I’m not helping you avoid him.” Laughter clings to his voice. Rodimus grins, and Ignis wonders how he does this - how he always manages to make friends, even when he’s being cagey or obnoxious. Like a cloak he pulls this air of ineffable friendliness around himself, and he gets what he wants. Most of the time. 

Other times he gets kicked off of his ship, apparently. Or gets them kicked off of ships, or chased by pirates, or - 

Well, it doesn’t work all of the time. 

“C’mon, I need to get the bit cleared before I can give him the grand tour. You think any of you slaggers showed him the haunted oil pools?” Rodimus grins wider, gregarious and bright. Ignis stares at the red-and-yellow of his plating with unabashed curiosity. He’d seen the picture, but he hadn’t seen it in real life before. It’s strange. 

Skids rolls his optics, still smiling. Fast friends. “Just comm him.” 

“Don’t have his comm number. Don’t have any of your comm numbers anymore. It’s a thing.” 

That gets a frown, but Skids pings him Ratchet’s number. Ignis flicks through the ‘pad, audials tuned to their conversation. 

He thumbs a glyph carved into a corner of the ‘pad; two brackets on either side of a circle around a dot, painted gold. He turns it over slowly, and grins. Excelsior - Rodimus - had taken the time to paint the back. The pattern is a concentric circle of harsh, flowing glyphs of red and gold, spackled through with soft shades of spark-blue, in overlying glyphs. It’s a poem, sort of, translated into the language Rodimus was still teaching him. He runs his fingers over the inscription, feeling the uneven edges where his knife had dulled in the carving. “It’s new,” he murmurs, optics dimming in thought. 

“It’s a prayer,” Rodimus says absently. Then, “Heads up, bitlet, Ratchet’s on the way. Better duck ‘n cover.” Four helms turn to the door, where Ratchet shuffles in with Drift at his heels. The first mech is cleaning his hands with a ragged polishing cloth. Drift wanders in behind him, field steady but pulled tight against his plating, shoulders high and hunched around his audios. His hands linger on the handles of his swords. Rodimus turns back to Ignis. “Can you read it for me, bit? This is one you should know.” 

Ignis keeps one optic on the doctor and his mech. “The red is... Something about our line, right? Uh. ‘Our flame/Birthed in the first ember/Primus in his servos cradled/We the banishers of shadow’. Right, um, that’s... That’s about the line of the Flame, our line, that’s our Sigma-code. That’s why it’s red! Because you’re red, and I’m red.” 

Rodimus nods. The medic and the warrior hover at the fringes of their group. “Yeah, bit. Our line’s Sigma-code is combustion-based. Then you read...” 

“The yellow! Because the blue only makes sense when you know what the yellow and the red say.” 

“Exactly.” 

Ignis traces the glyphs with his finger. “This one is about our... clan? Yours or...” 

“Us, kiddo. We don’t have much of a clan anymore, but you know. It’s part of the form I used. Can you see it? How the form wouldn’t fit if I used a different topic?” 

“Because all the glyphs use a similar form, so you need to conjugate them together!” 

“Exactly.” They grin at each other. 

“‘We the lingering secret/Consumers of the above/Glittering rush upon dragging tangles/We disciples of the cycled word/Study of the tangled hive/Bequeathed of knowledge’... But. That doesn’t make sense.” He tilts his helm. 

“You have to read it _with_ the red, bit. See how the glyphs merge? The first one is a variant of the original tunneler oath. The clan oath is based off of that. Try again.” 

“Right...” 

Drift opens a commline to Ratchet. ::He’s doing something new, right? This - doesn’t seem like Roddy.:: 

::It’s not like him. No. He’s grown up, just like the rest of us.:: 

They watch them both in silence, after that. Rodimus is nearly curled around Ignis’ small form, field soothing as he walks the mechling through deciphering the strange glyphs on the back of the datapad. Each correct answer makes him glow with pride, as they work through it slowly. There’s no sign of the boredom that Drift would think would grip him, no impatient squirming or blurted out answers. 

He wonders if this is the Rodimus that saw his city burn. 

They talked about it, just once, what it had been like before Nyon burned. The pressures of leading the rebellion, the loss of his home and his friends. He’d talked about how he’d woven the charges through most of Nyon before knowing they would be needed. The city, he’d said, was always going to be destroyed. Her people weren’t meant to go with her. Lies, probably, he realizes now. Rodimus had lied to him. Was Rodimus ever even his _amica_ , or was that just him going through the motions, accepting Drift because he was useful? Was he just another lie? Is this the mech Rodimus should have been, curled up around this mech of his own spark and metal? 

::Do you recognize any of this?:: He asks Ratchet. 

::It all sounds foreign to me. Some of it looks like the Primal Vernacular, but older. Old as the Knights of Cybertron, and just as strange.:: He huffs through his vents, walking towards the small, huddled group. Skids sees him and backs off. Ravage does, too, but he only makes himself more comfortable on the brat’s lap. In their silent war this is a battle he’s going to win; Ratchet’s never managed to kick him out of the Medbay entirely, and he’d given up a long time ago. As long as he’s out of the way Ratchet doesn’t care. 

The last to look up is Rodimus. Even Ignis stops talking before him. “Hey, Ratchet.” He says, careless grin taking place of the soft, thoughtful expression he’d directed at Ignis. “You here to clear my bit?” 

Ratchet grunts and hooks Ignis up to a diagnosis scanner. “Sit up, Ignis. Follow my finger with your optics. Good. Now hold out your servos, activate the magnets in your servos. Wiring looks good. You’re fine. If anything hurts, come back. Talk to Velocity.” 

“Gotcha, doc. You here that bit?” 

“Yeah, I heard. I got _audios_.” 

“If you got audios that work you’d have stayed where I _put_ you.” Ignis’ shoulders hitch up around his helm. Rodimus stares him down for a moment before turning his attention back on Ratchet. “What else should I be looking out for?” 

Ratchet only lets it throw him for a moment. “Nothing, since you’re a damn glitch who’ll be on the same ship in a breem. Get on a berth, you’ve got damage.” 

Rodimus shrugs. “Hasn’t killed me yet.” Still, he wanders away from Ignis to climb up onto a berth. “Nothing much wrong outside the obvious.” 

The _obvious_. Drift almost snorts. 

\-- 

Thunderclash wanders into Swerve’s bar at about half-shift, when the room is dead. Even the regulars are gone. It’s just Swerve behind the bar, bottles of engex scattered around him, cluttered amidst empty glasses. 

He takes a seat in front of the mech. 

Swerve doesn’t have the decency to look surprised; he only slides forward a glass of glimmering, bright red engex, so strong the smell of it burns all down his intake. 

“You knew?” Thunderclash mutters. He takes a sip and isn’t surprised at the way it leaves an ache deep in his chest; Swerve knows better than most that when he drinks he prefers to feel it. He spent too much time resorting to engex brewed in jerry-rigged stills to have any sort of refined taste. 

“Grapevine. Skids told me, you know him, he likes me. Told me a lot more, too, seeing as he was following the mech from wherever he came from. Saw the whole thing on the bridge. Even watched him when he was sitting with the kid. Thought a bit. Knew it was you who did him in when Skids told me it was Rodimus. Couldn’t not be, seeing as I tracked your tab by how in you were with him before he left.” 

Thunderclash downs the rest of the drink in a long, fast shot. “You’re working on something new?” 

“Here,” he passes over a double shot of something deep green and fizzy, fumes so strong you can almost see them coming off it. “You should know I’m pretty sure he loved you once, so, you know, you can at least try this time. ‘Specially since the bits yours, I know humans are gaga over that slag, you can do all sorts of junk to get Roddy to love you back. I heard...” 

Thunderclash lets the mini’s voice wash over him. As rude as he knows it is, Swerve’s diatribes are best weathered with a distant audio and a willingness to ignore anything irrelevant. He’d managed to stay friends with the mech longer than most, so he thought that this was the touch that was needed; ignore the words, appreciate the actions. 

Like the glass of engex. It goes down rough and hits his tank like fire; he glances up at Swerve and realizes that this is probably a new blend. The mech is carefully doling out measures of engex and additives, adding each to a glass according to some unseen direction. 

“Tell me what you think,” he says. 

“It’s... good.” He leans over the counter, resting his arm on the bartop. 

Swerve passes him another. “You know you’ll be fine, right. Seems the kid’s pretty cool with most things, get to know him, heard that that’s what human kids do, you wanna borrow my soaps and see? Could learn a whole lot about this whole new ‘family’ thing if you want.” 

Thunderclash grunts. “I am not sure if I would like to,” he admits. His processor feels muzzy, optics unable to focus. The bar is little more than a smear of light and shadow and color. “The idea that he is of my coding is... very strange.” He drags his hand over his face, then drags the glass over to his mouth. Silent, Swerve plops a curly straw into the glass. “And he doesn’t like me. Roddy. Ignis. Either of them. Why do they hate me? People don’t _hate_ me. Megatron likes me. _Magnus_ likes me! He doesn’t like anyone. No one? Anyone.” Thunderclash whines. 

He’s glad that the bar is empty, in a part of his processor cut off from the haze of engex. This isn’t how he’d like the crew to see him, lovelorn and pathetic. The rest of him simply wants Rodimus to be there. And perhaps Megatron, who suffered no fools and would gladly smack some sense into him. 

Swerve pats the top of him helm. “Rodimus loved you,” he reassures his friend. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, not really, only that Thunderclash hears it and believes it. “He can love you again. You know. Just gotta try. Woo him! Do all that slag you did last time.” 

He sighs. “He ran away,” he moans. “From me!” 

“From all of us, Captain.” 

Thunderclash mutters incoherently. Then he finishes off the drink. Swerve hands him another. Enabling? Certainly. But there are times when the mech needs to simply wind down and take the pressure off. Swerve can’t be a lot of things, but he can listen, and he can provide the engex. 

And, when he inevitably passes out, he can comm Megs to pick him up. 

\-- 

Brainstorm picked Ignis up from the Medbay. “Better you don’t see this scrap,” he’d told the bitlet when he was insistently shuffled out of the room. “Let’s have you clean up that mess you left in my lab while your ... creator? Mom? Carrier? Whatever he is, while Ratchet gets him all fixed up.” 

Ignis went. 

That had left Ratchet, Drift, and Skids alone with their erstwhile ex-Captain. He sat back on the berth, waiting, silent, for treatment, without looking at any of them. 

Ratchet works silently. He doesn’t look at Rodimus, optics steady on his frame, mouth pulled into a tense, straight line. His hands are brusque as he scours away built-up rust and replaces long-gone parts. It hurts, but Rodimus bites back anything he would say. Not even when Ratchet is harsher than he strictly should be, drawing pinpricks of energon as he scrapes the rust back too far, as he screws things too tightly, pushes aside delicate components with a certain lack of care. He’s angry. Rodimus lets him work it out by himself. 

Eventually, when he has Rodimus turned and facing the door while he works on his spoiler, he speaks. “You look like slag.” 

“They don’t have Cybertronians where I was.” He resists shrugging his shoulders, but only barely. 

“Didn’t have mechanics, either?” 

“Not ones that can do this slag.” He wiggles the broken ends of the motor mechanisms of his spoiler, newly exposed under their layers of paint and rust, and grins. “Delicate machinery, Ratch.” 

He hisses as the medic slaps the connectors. “Sure.” 

More silence. It seems to discomfort Ratchet more than it does Rodimus or Drift; he’s not used to the quiet anymore. It defies his expectations of the Nyan. When he breaks it, it’s to tap his shoulder and tell him to lie on his front. “I’m putting you down to replace this slag.” 

It’s a testament to old, well-worn trust in the medic that Rodimus allows him to. 

He sinks into the dark of medically-induced stupor with only a touch of reluctance. 

\-- 

Ignis lets himself be led as far as the elevator before he slips away, Ravage at his heels. He just closes the elevator door when Brainstorm is distracted by the femme.

“Where are we going?” The cat rasps. 

“...Anywhere but there,” the bitlet admits. “I don’t - it’s been a _weird_ few days. Weird. Awesome in the old sense. Just..” He shrugs, spoiler twitching. His denta itch in that aching way they do before a growth spurt, or when he’s stressed out. Like the metal attaching them to his jaw wants to come loose. “Since we’re staying I have’ta figure things out on my own.” 

He needs time to figure out who Rodimus was, before he was his Matri. Needs to figure out what he’s coming back to. 

“You’re staying?” 

“I don’t think he knows we are, yet. But we are.” Ignis tries to make himself believe it. 

They wander deeper in the ship, taking the elevator down, down, as far as it will go. Then Ignis pulls the control panel apart to make it sure it won’t go any further. He makes sure to set the panel to rights before he moves on. They start walking after that, through winding hallways and strange, purposeless large rooms. Ignis catches the tantalizing scent of - something. Like the battlefields he’d visited once upon a time with his carrier, when they would eat their fill of the rusted dead, the heady flavor of exposed and corroding sentia metallico lingering on his glossa for days afterwards, even after all the mechparts were gone. 

“What’s down here?” He asks Ravage. 

“Mmm... Not much, really. The oil reserves. The crypts. Storage areas, though not much used, and the repositories for our energon. Other sundries and whatnot, depending on where we’ve been and who we’ve fought recently.” The cat rolls his shoulders, brushing against Ignis’ legs. “You won’t find anything to interest you down here.” 

“Ah.” He thinks, then tags the corridor as “food”. “Well, how about a place no one will find us?” 

The cat takes the lead easily. 

Ignis shuts down his commsuite as completely as he can, draws his field against his plating, and follows. 

“We’re not leaving,” he says with childish finality. “I won’t let him.” 

The cat snorts. 

Ignis pats the back of his neck softly. When he engages the tazers in his palms the cat jerks, twitches, and then collapses into a mass of smoking metal on the ground. “You really shouldn’t underestimate people,” Ignis mutters. “It makes you look dumb.” He takes the cat by the hind leg and begins to drag him down the corridor, towards the smell of rusting metal. “I’m tired of being lied to. I’m tired of people _lying to me_.” He shoves into the room, eying the collection of crypts in the room. “You know, you learn lotsa stuff when you’re livin’ with pirates. People like to pretend that just ‘cause I’m a kid I don’t know things, like I didn’t grow up killin’ people and stealin’ things. But I did.”

He looks down at the cat, optics still dark, and drops his leg. He reaches up to shove the lid off of a crypt. “I don’t know what war was like. But I know how to be a bandit.” He hauls the cat up slowly, pulling him onto his shoulder and then standing on unsteady legs to roll him over the side of the crypt. There’s an awful clanging sound as he lands on whoever the original inhabitant of the crypt was. “And I know that you’ve been watching me.” He tugs the lid back into place. “And I’m really sorry, but...” He shrugs. “I don’t trust you not to tell on me, and I need answers.” 

He turns on his heel to leave the room. He doesn’t pause at the doorway; there is no hitch in his step. He stops only to slap an electrified hand against the door lock, shorting it out and locking Ravage into the room. 

“So,” Ignis says to himself, “I’m gonna go get myself some answers.”


	18. Chapter 18

Hot Rod leads Bolt through the underbelly of the city by the hand. “You’re a bit big for the tunnels,” he says, “But that’s okay! I figure you’re not gonna be down here all that much anyhow.” He grins over his shoulder at him. 

Bolt smiles tremulously back, though that’s hard to see in the dim rainbow light of the tunnel. “This graffiti, this the stuff I seen you scrawl everywhere?” 

“Yeah!” There’s a bit of skip added to his step, as if he’s so excited he can no longer hold it in. He points to an orange scrawl on the wall, crawling over dimmer colors. “That’s mine! It’s Megatron’s poem ‘bout a sundered star.” 

“Those are words?” A hand reaches out and slides over the glowing glyphs. Hot Rod watches with a pleased expression, bouncing on his heels. “Where did you learn this?” 

“The tribe elder been teachin’ us.” Hot Rod points to a touch of smudged white amidst the orange. “See? This is where I messed up and then it got corrected by Trip.” 

“Trip?” 

“He’s the youngling that runs the creche for my group.” Hot Rod paused, and then hurries down the corridor. “He doesn’t like me too much since I keep escaping.” 

Bolt makes a short, amused sound. He could commiserate with this Trip, whoever he turned out to be; just because Roddy enjoyed being with them above ground didn’t mean he was in any way obedient. 

“Where we heading, Rod?” 

They take a step around a sharp corner, and then Hot Rod leads him into a hidden corridor. It’s nothing more than a trick of the optics, the tunnel made to look like a single piece of metal. Bolt steps through and can’t help his gasp of surprise. If the writing had looked like graffiti before, here it was a veritable mural - an unending, sinuous, ancient piece of artwork that was yet still being worked on. A hundred thousand hands had carved trillions of glyphs into the walls, sprawling maps of stars and constellations, spiralling shapes of extinct creatures that battled for space amidsts shining and now-shattered memorializations of cities. “Wow,” he vents. 

“This,” Hot Rod says proudly, “Is the entrance to the last _Archivia Chancery et Primia_ , kindled frame of the city, living memory of the last archive-seers of the Acropolex.” He runs his hand over the wall. It comes away smeared with a rainbow of glowing colors. “This is the home of the Racers of Nyon.” 

Behind them both, Igniter’s steps stutter. Hot Rod is doing his best to ignore him. Bolt is too ashamed to look his leader in the eye, trailing behind his little friend. His reaction, either way, is missed by both of them. 

\-- 

 

Ignis skulks. 

He doesn’t like to skulk, low to the ground and feeling like he’s got something to hide, but he skulks all the same, skittering through the halls of the ship in the hopes that no one will see him. 

They don’t; it’s just his luck that their security officer was never really replaced. He lingers around corners as he tries to wrestle his mapping program under control. The Magnus’ office, the Captain’s office, or the little recorder he’d seen wandering around - they were all viable endpoints. He just needed _something_. 

Bots wave to him as he passes them in the halls. He waves back, grinning, adding a skip to his step as he weaves between their legs. Most of them are so much bigger than he is! 

It doesn’t take him very long to find the bridge, and no one seems to notice him as he slides a grate aside near the floor to skitter back up into the vents. He peers through the vents, down at the mechs and rooms below. He almost laughs when he realizes he’s just gone in a circle again, hiding in the ship and sneaking around. 

It doesn’t bother him, but it makes something squirmy settle in his tanks. When he finds the captain’s office, empty and with the desk piled high with datapads, he pops the grate off and drops into the room. 

Information, Ignis has learned, isn’t hidden in piles of datapads. He searches the desk first, rifling through the short, narrow draws. It brings up packages of energon treats, broken styluses, a collection of spare datapads, an ancient looking datafile of - he checks - poetry, and a half-assembled model of a ship. But no information about Matri. He huffs through his vents. 

Then he looks at the drawers again, helm tilted. 

The top one, where he found the poetry, is a little too shallow for the drawer’s shape. 

He drags it out, setting in on the floor, and feels around the seams for false paneling. After a second the tips of his fingers find the edge of it, and he tilts it up. There! A datapad, just like he knew there’d be. More than one. Five or six at least, and a collection of datachips to go with them, a scrap of flimsy on blue paper. 

Ignis goes for the datapad first, holding the awkwardly large pad in his hands and flicking it on. The screen flickers once before starting up. 

It’s a picture of his Matri. Except - not, because it’s an image capture of _Rodimus_ , when he still had all his parts and his paint was red and yellow. He’s shiny, sprawled out in recharge like Ignis isn’t used to seeing him, like he feels utterly safe. His head is tilted back on a deep orange thigh, mouth agape, one hand on his chest and the other curled on his hips, curled up with a blue hand. There’s a smudge of blue at the corner of his mouth. In the background Ignis can see the edge of a viewscreen. 

“Oh,” he murmurs, and flicks through more of the image captures. It’s more of the same - images of Rodimus, over and over and over. Grinning at the camera. Sleeping in strange places. Sprawled on his chest, drawing something with his glossa sticking out of his mouth. Laughing in groups of mechs, engex in hand. Gregarious and quiet and still and fighting. In one he’s curled up at the edge of a deep, black lake, helm bowed, hand shoved in his mouth as his spoiler broadcasts an aching, ugly mourning message. Another has him bright with rage, fire blooming around him, arms spread wide, gun in hand. 

Just Rodimus, in every iteration imaginable. 

He presses play on a video. 

_“Clash!”_ The Rodimus on the screen yelps. He’s in some unknown area of the ship, bristling like a felinoid as he jerks his hands away from a keypad. 

_”What are you doing?”_ The captain’s voice, deeper than Ignis remembers it being, says. _“Are you going out to meteor surf again? Another storm isn’t due in this area for cycles.”_

_“I... It’s none of your fragging business what I’m doing,_ Captain _.”_ Rodimus hisses, drawing himself straight and stiff, spoiler wings arched up over his helm. His optics flare pale and bright. 

The camera tilts, up and then down in a sharp jerk. Then they travel up Rodimus’ frame, from his peds, lingering at his chest plate and spoiler before settling on his faceplates again. _“You’ve been unwell, Rodimus. Please.”_

He stands even straighter, until his spine could be replaced with an iron rod and his chest is puffed out. _“Go frag yourself and your concern, ‘Clash. I’m fine! And I’m going out because this_ damn ship and you damn bots _are driving me_ insane! _So if you’d just let me leave, I won’t flame up the next time some bot_ gets in my damn way _!”_ By the end of the tirade his vents are gasping, cycling too hard and too fast, loud in the nearly-silent corridor. He presses one hand to the top of his chest, just above his spark chamber, where Ignis had been smelted so many years ago. His optics are nearly white. Dermal plating is twisted up in a monstrous scowl. Ignis can almost hear the tell-tale hiss of his combustion engine coming online. 

_“No...”_ Thunderclash sighs. The camera moves off to the side, then down to look at his own peds. _”If you are so unhappy, Rodimus, then please. Take whatever time you need.”_ He takes a step away from the other mech. 

His shoulders slump, but his spoiler is kept so rigid over his shoulders it’s hard to tell. He keys a passcode into the door, which opens up into a hangar. 

The video ends in a freeze frame of his matri’s back. 

Ignis stares down at the screen for a moment. 

He wasn’t sure if he understood what he’d just seen. 

No wonder his Matri had left the ship - the captain was _stalking_ him. 

Oh, deities, he’d dragged his Matri back to the ship his stalker was captain of! He flips throug the pad rapidly, searching for something worse than what he’d found. Nothing. No captures of the captain hurting Rodimus, nothing but him over and over again doing normal things. 

He flips to another video. This one is of Rodimus laying across the mech taking the video, helm pillowed on his arms, just over the mech’s sparkplates. One hand cups Rodimus’ cheek, running his thumb over his cheek filial. _“I love you,”_ Thunderclash murmurs. _“My spark.”_

Blue optics flicker online. Rodimus’ helm moves slowly, lifting up to look up at him. _“Hmm? Shut up, Thunderbutt. ‘M sleeping.”_ His voice is low and full of static, slow and thick.   
_“I’m sorry, Rodimus. Go back to sleep.”_ Rodimus’ helm drops again, and the video ends. 

...Perhaps not a stalker, then. 

Ignis sets aside the datapad, feeling very suddenly dirty and strange. 

Does that make Thunderclash his sire? 

...Why did Rodimus run away from his _sire_? 

He searches through the datachips frantically, plugging each chip into the pad and skimming the contents. 

More Rodimus, just - all of it. Spanning _centuries_ , most of them Rodimus either ignoring or scowling at the camera. A shiver runs down his spinal strut as he thinks of how long Thunderclash must have been obsessed with his Matri, of how long he must have manipulated him to get those captures of him happy and in love. 

His tank clenches. He puts everything in the office back to rights, hands trembling, and skitters back into the vents. 

He needs to get him and his matri off this ship as soon as he frelling can. 

\-- 

Slinking through the venting gets him to the medbay fairly quickly. He watches as the medic - was he in league with Thunderclash? Was anyone on the ship safe? - attaches a new spoiler hub to Rodimus’ back. He watches with only a faint echo of his normal fascination. Now it seems more dangerous than cool, getting put back together by someone who knows how to do it right. 

He has some of his answers, anyhow, and if the captain did fancy himself in love with Rodimus, then at least for now Ignis knew he was safe. So was Ignis, at least until Ravage woke up and escaped. Which, if he’d timed it right, wouldn’t be until the offshift. 

If. 

H invents slowly. If he can find the little bot, the recordericon or whatever, he’d probably be able to get his answers. If he went to Brainstorm’s lab he’d find weapons, and maybe a way off the ship or protection from Thunderclash, if he was as obsessed as all those image captures said he was. If he found some mech in charge he could report him for being a creeper, maybe get him removed from the ship or just keep him away from Rodimus and Ignis. .

But he doesn’t know where the recordicon is, and he doesn’t know how to use any of the weapons in the lab, and he doesn’t trust that anyone in charge would stop Thunderclash if this has been going on so long. And they don’t have a way off the ship, because they’e so far away. Even the way Rodimus had gotten onto the ship, however he had, it would have been something rare or he’d have used it immediately. He’d of picked up Ignis and just left. 

His engine turns over. The bitlet hisses, processors stalled, unable to think of a way out. 

He lists out the facts as he knows them: his Matri had left the ship for some unknown reason, and had Ignis, and had been running away from _something_ for as long as Ignis could remember. The mechs on the ship weren’t happy to see him. Thunderclash is obsessed, in love, with him. Thunderclash is probably his sire. There isn’t a way off the ship for months. Ignis is stuck on the ship, full of maybe-enemies, with his Matri, his probably-a-stalker sire, and no way out. And he’d attacked the cat. 

So not looking good. 

Ignis shoves his fingers in his mouth. It’s childish, and not very smart, but his body recognizes his own frame and doesn’t secrete the pre-digestive. Instead his suckles and gnaws on them, comforted by the feeling of it, like when his carrier had fed him from his fingers as a tiny little newspark. His engine hiccups. He wants to cry. 

He can’t. 

Instead his attempts to dredge up the anger he’d felt realizing he was never going to know the truth, the frustration he’d been forced to bite down on whenever they’d moved ships, the bravery he’d felt when he was on the ship, alone. 

The little ‘bot attempts to wrap them around himself, but he can’t. The feelings slip between his fingers like solvents, lost to the seething fear that attempts to strangle his spark. He looks down at his Matri, and makes his decision. He scurries off to safer harbors, promising himself that he’ll   
be back before Rodimus awakens. 

\-- 

“He’s been there since surgery was over.” 

Drift watches as the bitlet scowls at the door, curled protectively over his carrier’s chassis. Then he looks at Ratchet, compulsively cleaning out the joints of his fingers, and winces. “He looks like he’s going to attack anyone who comes near.” 

“He would.” 

They both jerk around, Drift with one hand on the handle of his sword, to see Skids leaning against the back wall of the CMO’s office. There’s scrapes on his hands, thin cuts where felinoid claws had sliced through the plating. Energon drips off his fingers and splatters on the floor.  
Ratchet hisses and sweeps over to him, tossing the rag aside on the desk. “What happened?” 

“I found the brat’s first victim - he caught Ravage by neck in the crypts, knocked him out for a solid three cycles.” Ratchet decides that the scratches are minor at best, a common symptom of Skid’s relationship with the cassette. He wipes them down with a spare polishing cloth as he speaks. 

“Are you sure the Decepticon didn’t attack him? Ravage is far from what I would call stable.” 

“He had a hand print burned into his protoform, Ratch. Pretty sure it was unprompted, considering the look of the kid out there.” 

“Unprompted,” Ratchet drawls, disposing of the cloth. “Your feline friend doesn’t need claws to harm people, Skids, and he’s been awfully close to the brat since he came onboard.” 

“Because I asked him to be.” Skids looks over Ratchet’s shoulder and through the one-way observation window, at the kid. “I didn’t trust the brat when I saw him, and I sure as the Pit don’t now. Kid’s a sociopath.” 

Ratchet grunts. Drift half-turns to look at the boy again. “Rodimus... He makes bots _better_. I can’t believe he’d raise his own ‘bot to be a bad person.” 

“Rodimus was a screw up, Drift. I loved him, but he was always just as likely to mess something up as he was to make it better. He was _chaos_ ; he just as easily kicked you off this ship as he did bring you over to the Autobots. There was a reason he left! A reason he’s not the Captain anymore! Because he doesn’t care about anyone but himself. You think his kid is any different?” Skids throws his arms up. “He’s a manipulative little monster who’s been playing all of us for days! He said he _eats people_ for Primus’ sake, and we brushed it off as a joke. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a joke! Drift, you’ve gotta see it.” Skids jabs his finger towards the window. “He attacked Ravage and he thought he was Ravage’s friend, he like him! I saw it, you saw it - and what kind of ‘bot attacks their friend like that? No remorse, smart enough to hide the body?” 

“...Bots that haven’t learned how to care about other people.” Drift rests his hand on Skids’ raised one, gently pushing it down. “Rodimus came to us missing his _spoiler hub_. What kind of life do you think they’ve been living? He told us that they’ve been on the run since he kindled. A life spent afraid, running for your life, never able to trust anyone. You’d never have a friend, never have a home, never be able to let your guard down. He’s lived like a MTO except that he’s done it surrounded by enemies.” 

Skids huffs through his vents. But he stops and thinks. He looks between Drift and the boy again. “I don’t trust him.” He says. 

“Then don’t. But try to understand them.” 

\-- 

Ignis could hear them. He kept his eyes on the door even as he boosted the sensors in his spoiler. The sensors are built for atmospheric detection in the twisting roads of the tunnels. Unlike the Praxan doorwings, they’re not a multi-sensory organ. They measure the amount of liquid in the atmosphere, the distance of the walls from a chassis by echolocation, the amount of drag a racer experiences, and communicate driving signals. But they cannot be used to orient or boost ones complete sensory input like a Praxan can, diving heat and radiation as well as sound and sensation for life amidst the confusing maze of crystals that Praxus was built within. The attempt to do so by ratcheting up sensor reception can burn out the sensors and damage the spoiler. 

Ignis knows this. He’d done it, once or twice, and had to wait for the sensors to self-repair. It’d hurt, and he’d felt like he’d lost all the sensors in his back until they’d grown back, despite there only being a few burnt-out nodes. He doesn’t care if he does that right now. Not if he can use them as a double set of audios, while keeping track of everyone’s location in the medbay. 

He knows that it’s unlikely that anyone will attack them in the medbay. But he can’t help himself, now, afraid as he is. He settles himself on his carrier’s chassis, right over his spark, and tries to let it soothe him, but even his field is strange. Flat, calm, when it never is when Rodimus is okay and online. Even recharging there’s always a certain flutter to it. Ignis tucks his head under his carrier’s chin and breathes in the scent of his polish, his metal, paintstripper and old engex. 

The thing about being afraid all the time is that, eventually, you burn yourself out. You simply can’t manage it anymore. The part of his processor that had felt fear, that had quailed him and terrified him when he was younger, had atrophied and died by the time he was old enough to understand what it meant when his carrier pushed him into a vent and told him to be very, very quiet. He’d gotten very used to never being afraid, because he’d always been afraid, and because nothing was ever a new fear. Pirates and guns and blood; that was his life. Space and travel. Bars and the kids of people who inhabit the kinds of bars his matri frequented. That’s what he learned not to be afraid of, because if he was ever afraid of those things he’d be afraid all the time. And it was okay. He was better like this. 

But he’d never learned to be not-afraid of Cybertronians, or of the kinds of things Cybertronians do with other Cybertronians. 

When he was little, still the same size as most organics, Matri had put them on a ship with a movie star on board. They were supposed to be playing security. Her name was Anasi, and she had been beautiful. And she’d had someone like Thunderclash, too, someone who was popular and who was obsessed with her, and she’d been afraid. Ignis knows this because he’d spent most of the trip close to her, and she had spoken often of it when she was drunk, which was most of the time. He’d seen her scars. It was just once, when she was changing and he’d walked in on her. There were huge grey cracks in her carapace, across her chest and her hips and down her left thigh. Ignis had been scared. He’d cried, and she never showed him them again. But she’d held him close and explained to him how it happened. 

Yerv had been a great leader on her planet. They hadn’t spoken very much, and she’d decided that she didn’t like him, though most did. And at first that had angered him, but she was beautiful and he was fascinated, and soon he declared that he would mate her. When she had denied him, he attacked her, and she had fled. There was still work for her offplanet, for all she was ruined. And she had explained how men grow to be like that, that one could never, ever trust men. 

By the end of the trip, when he was bleeding and she was crying and they were both attempting to staunch his matri’s bleeding form, Ignis had agreed. 

Time had softened the lesson, but some part of him still does. Love like that is dangerous. Obsession is dangerous. _Thunderclash_ is the most dangerous kind of person, because he is both obsessed and in love and in charge of the ship. Just like Yerv had been. Yerv, who’d attacked them, and Yerv who’d gotten away with it because he had the power to get away with it. 

So Ignis is afraid, now, of one of the only things he’d ever been afraid of. T’s a new fear, sharp where it twists his intake and seeps into his processors. It makes him curl up on his carrier’s chest to watch the door. It makes him ready to shoot anyone who makes the wrong move. 

Thunderclash will never get near _either_ of them again. 

No one on this ship will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ITS NEVER GOING TO END 
> 
> ALSO IF ITS NOT CLEAR ENOUGH SKIDS AND RAVAGE ARE DEF CLANGING  
> IM NOT SURE WHY BUT I WAS TIPSY FOR MOST OF THE LATTER HALF OF THIS CHAPTER AND IT MADE ME GIGGLE  
> SO REALLY I KNOW WHY 
> 
> ITS BECAUSE IM RIDICULOUS 
> 
> ALSO!!!! IMMA COURT ME A BETA. THEY ARE A BEAUTIFUL RED AND YELLOW LOVELY PERSON BETA. NOT A FISH. BUT THEYRE CUTE LIKE A BETA, WHICH IS THE SAME THING I THINK??? SO CUTE. THE CUTEST. AND A VERY GOOD CONVERSATIONAL PARTNER AND THEY LET ME DRAG THEM TO LUNCH AND IT WAS WONDERFUL.


	19. Chapter 19

It began with a rumble. 

Rodimus lingered in a soft world, full of soft thoughts. The brush of Ignis’ field, phantom hands running over his spoiler, the smell of his son and something more. 

But then there was that rumble. It shivered up his chassis and down his abdomen, dying at the tops of his thighs. Something warm and heavy had settled on his chest. A field full of fear is pulled tight against a frame, but it still lashes painfully against his own. He raises his hand, slow and heavy as a dead thing, and lays it across his bitlet’s spoiler. “Ig...?” He murmurs, voxbox full of static and mouth slack. 

“Matri?” His bitlet says, sitting up abruptly. “Matri! Ratchet! He woke up!” 

He onlines his optics, waiting for the static to clear. “Off my chest, kid.” Ignis rolls off his chest and onto the floor. He lurches over to see him taking up a guard position to the door, which was strange but not overly so - someone must have offended him, or him somebody - and then settles on his back again. There’s a dead weight there, and he twitches and sits up. Then he remembers his ordered repairs, and he looks at Ratchet with a tired grin. “I’m good?” 

A message alert pops up on his HUD. He accepts, opening the information packets discreetly. They’ve got Drift’s signature. _Ignis attacked Ravage. We’ve called the captains, but Ravage isn’t pressing charges. Yet._

He sends back a blurt of empty data, more surprise than fear, to acknowledge the message.

The medic taps his shoulder. “As good as I could do, under the circumstances. Your frame wouldn’t integrate some of them completely; I’m putting you on a mineral supplement until further notice. No engex, just energon. Your combustion system has multiple microabrasions, and that system’s too specialized to replace with the parts I have. Don’t use it if you don’t have to, because I’m not cleaning your insides off the ship’s walls when you explode. Your spoiler should finish integrating with your processors in a few weeks, but if numbness or stiffness persists there’s something wrong with you and you’d better haul your aft back down here. Don’t try to be a big bot about it, either, ‘cause I didn’t just spend hours repairing your stupid aft just to have your spark gutter due to system failure. I’ll pull you out of the Well myself and reformat you into a toaster as an example for all the other stupid fraggers on this ship. Got it?” 

Rodimus snorts. “I know when I’ve got a repair that needs looking to,” he says, stretching languidly. “But sure, Ratch. Like I’d go against your orders.” He tries to flutter his spoiler wings. They hang like dead metal on his back. He shrugs off his worries and slides off the berth. His feet hit the floor next to his bit, and he pats the top of Ignis’ helm. “You okay there, Igs?” 

He can taste energon at the back of his intake. He grins at his little bot, at Ratchet, at the entirety of the medbay as his tank begins to ache. 

His boy snarls at him. “No,” he mutters, and nothing else. Rodimus can hear, just at the edge of his audial range, the sound of his bitlet’s guns humming. A bit more stressed than usual, then. Good. Attacking a crew member _should_ stress him out. 

“Am I good to go, doc?” 

Ratchet snorts. He waves them both off. “Get the Pit out of my Medbay, Rodimus. I don’t want to see you in here for a long, long time.” 

“You won’t, Ratch!” Rodimus waves them off as he herds his bit out of the medbay. His eyes skip over Drift, hovering near the door to Ratchet’s office. He doesn’t even look at him. 

It’s probably becoming a habit. 

When they step out of the room, it’s too a message lobbed at his back. _Keep yourself and the kid out of the way, brat._ Ratchet’s gruff voice carries through the message.

_Never planned not to._

In the hallway his little bot prowls ahead of him, spoiler wings flicking erratically. “Something up?” 

Ignis grunts. He shudders, optics too-bright, and admits, “I zapped Ravage ‘cause I wanted to be left alone.” 

Rodimus doesn’t even pause. He pinches the tip of his bitlet’s spoiler and drags him down a side hallway, steps moving just fast enough to force Ignis into a trot. “I know. What were you looking for? Brig time? You know better, Ignis!” 

\--

He huffs through all of his vents at once. Still, seeing his matri take sudden control makes his own systems begin to dial down, comforted by the instinctual knowledge that his carrier could deal with anything. “I dunno! I just... You were...” A low, static laden keen escapes him. “I was _scared_.” 

Rodimus’ engine makes a harsh, strangled sound. It disturbs the new, sweet purr of it enough for both of them to startle, stop, and take a few careful invents. “Ratchet wouldn’t have let us leave if you were a danger to anyone. Or-” He tilts his helm up to the ceiling. A moment later Ignis gets a ping on his comm, and he opens the channel. ::There are people in the ceiling watching us to see what we do next.:: 

::Oh.:: 

::You got a good reason for attacking the cat?:: He steers them down another corridor. ::Other than him being a slagger.:: 

::You were lying to me.:: He shrugs his shoulders, spoiler twitching and pressing itself against Rodimus’ pinching fingers, and his carrier finally lets go of it to grab his hand. 

Rodimus hauls them down another corridor and then through a side hallway. ::What did you find out?:: Like it was inevitable that Ignis would try to learn things on his own. 

At least he can say his carrier knows him. ::Enough.:: He pauses, tripping over his feet as his carrier keeps pulling along. ::Slow down! Where are we going?:: 

::Somewhere safe.::

That does make Ignis trip over his own feet, finally, and Rodimus doesn’t even pause before scooping him up in his arms and continuing on his way. 

Ignis distinctly remembers the safest place he knows, and he outgrew the little nook above his carrier’s spark chamber before he was thirty. The dark, the warmth of his frame, the thrum of his spark, the taste of his metal and his energon. That was safety. 

He can barely comprehend that there might be somewhere else anyone could consider safe. ::Why?::

They stop in front of a door. Rodimus taps the edge of the keypad, barely pausing to think for a moment before entering the code. ::Because I obviously can’t trust you on your own, bit.::

_BEEP_

He hisses. “He changed the code! That -” He bites down on whatever he was going to say, dropping Ignis on his feet to hack the keypad. He pulls a tiny screwdriver from his subspace, undoes the side panel, and reaches in to cut and then twist two wires together. The door buzzes, then chimes and slides open. Ignis shuffles into the room as his carrier sets the keypad back to rights, looking around. 

It’s a mid-sized room, with a thick mat on the floor. Several dummies are scattered throughout it, along with racks of swords and small towers of pretty stones. It is... relaxing, Ignis guesses, looking at collections of paintings on the walls. For someone who needed that kind of thing, even the sound of the little artificial water fountain in the corner is nice. He steps further in the room, suddenly intensely curious as to why _this_ is the only place in the entire universe his carrier considers safe. “Where are we?” 

“Sword practice room. Most of this is Drift’s stuff. We used to train here. After he left the ship it wasn’t used much, but I guess when he came back he started practicing again.” He stays near the door, fingers buried in the guts of the control panel. “Secure the room, Igs. You know the drill. And since I know you have them, I want you to use your mags to secure the ceiling vents, too.” 

“... _Fine_.” He skitters up the wall and to the ceiling. It’s obviously the most dangerous surface in the room, because both Ravage and Skids use them, and they’ll know how to get around most things by now. 

He finds the nearest vent-areas. After a moment’s consideration he pulls out a flat squeeze-container of super glue from behind his shin armor and uses the epoxy to stick the grate’s edges to the ceiling. It sticks and doesn’t come loose when he pulls on it, which means it’ll give them warning. He wishes, for a moment, that he’d thought about grabbing something stronger, or better, or more useful from one of the labs. His mouth hurts. He realizes that he’d bitten down on his bottom lip and releases it, running his glossa over the puncture marks. It aches. 

He skitters along the ceiling, sealing loose panels and vents as he goes along. Halfway through the room his first packet is exhausted, and he drops it to reach for one taped to the inside of his pauldron armor. He breaks the seal on it and finishes the room, dropping down next to his Matri. Rodimus is messing with the door’s lock, its guts spilling out of the casing. “What makes this room safe?” He asks. 

“It’s Drift’s,” he says, like that’s the only explanation needed. Then, “Stay here.” The door slides open. 

“What?” Ignis sputters as his carrier steps through it. “Wait! Don’t! Bring -” It shuts in his face. He bangs his fists against the door, optics wide, voxbox aching from the strength of his shouting. “Matri! Ma! Ma! Don’t - Thunderclash -!” He bares his teeth and comms him. ::Don’t go near Thunderclash!:: 

His carrier shuts off the comm with a sharp ::Not now, Ignis. I have to clean up your mess.:: 

::But-!:: 

::No! Ignatious, stay where you are and let me deal with this. I know what to do. I know these mechs.:: 

::Thunderclash is _dangerous_.:: 

::I know.:: Then the channel closes, and Ignis can’t get it to open again. 

He slides down until he’s crouched, helm pressed to the door, and makes a helpless, crackling sound. 

Deities, he hopes his carrier knows what he’s doing.

\-- 

 

Rodimus has no idea what he’s going to say to Megatron. 

And he’s going to have to ask why Ignis is suddenly scared of Thunderclash. 

Primus damn it. 

He storms onto the bridge with his shoulders thrown back and his optics narrowed, engine rumbling in warning. “Megatron,” he addresses the Captain’s chair. Thunderclash stands up out of it. 

The rest of the bridge crew stares. “Rodimus?” Someone whispers. It seems that not everyone had gotten the memo. 

Thunderclash’s expression is grim. “Megatron contacted me.” He says. 

“We can talk about it in your office.” 

“Rodimus -” 

“Your office, _Captain_.” The sneered title makes Thunderclash flinch, like it always has, and he pivots on his heel and heads to the door just off of the bridge. Rodimus follows him. Maybe he should feel bad about it, but he doesn’t. He just pushes harder. 

Inside, Rodimus tries to puff out his plating to make himself seem larger. The dead weight of his spoiler sends phantom itches along his spinal strut. Thunderclash stares at him, shoulders set, spinal column straight, and looms over him. “Ignis attacked Ravage.” He says. His mouth smooths into a straight line, his face a mask. “Who has decided, due to extenuating circumstances, not to press charges.” 

Rodimus points at his chest. “What circumstances?” 

“We believe he was afraid. Nautica spoke for him. Others as well. It seems we may have over-looked the amount of stress he was put under. As there was no _permanent_ harm, and Ravage has dissuaded us from -” 

“Are you going to punish him or not?” 

“Not as much as he deserves, if it doesn’t happen again.” 

“And if it does?” 

“The brig.” 

Rodimus snorts. Thunderclash stands like a stone wall, optics overbright. Something ugly seethes inside his armor, as he stares at this mech who left him behind, in the hands of the DJD. This hero who would have let him be tortured for the crime of daring to leave. He jerks his helm to the side, optics skittering over the changes wrought to the room. He categorizes each new image capture on the walls, every new datafile on the shelves, knick knacks and scattered memorabilia. 

He can see scattered remnants of the _Lost Light_ ’s trip around the universe, little things he recognizes from Ignis’ own thieving habits, when his clever fingers had lifted pointless little baubles from aliens and portside shops alike. Their rambles hadn’t taken them so far apart after all. How many times had they nearly crossed paths? It was only ever a matter of time. 

“Well,” he starts. Stops. He taps a staccato pattern against his thigh. “Leave my kid to me. He makes mistakes, he’s scared, he’s always scared but you guys terrify him, and, and,” his engine sputters. “Look, he’ll keep making mistakes like that. He can’t help it.” He looks at Thunderclash, suddenly feeling fierce. “None of you have the - the _right_ to touch him, or talk to him, or command him. He’s not a Cybertronian, or an Autobot, or anything. He’s not even part of your crew. You understand?” 

“He attacked another crew member. He can’t -” 

“He was _scared_. You scare him. So leave him alone. Tell me, and I’ll deal with it. But you’ve never even met a kid before. You don’t know how to talk to him, or what’s reasonable, or what he understands and doesn’t. He doesn’t think he did something wrong. He put the cat to sleep. That’s not terrible. That’s what he does, when he’s scared. He runs away.” Rodimus pokes him in the chest, staring up into wide optics. “Leave him alone. Don’t talk to him. Got it?” 

A large hand holds his. There is warmth, and the press of stronger, larger parts around his. Thunderclashcould crush his hand without a thought. He doesn’t. He knows exactly how hard to hold him. “Rodimus,” Thunderclash says. “Please. We’re not angry.” 

Rodimus tries to jerk away. He refuses to release him. “Let go.” 

“Please...!” 

“Thunder-!” 

“Listen to me! For once. For once, as I have listened to you, please. _Rodimus_.” Thunderclash’s spark is in his mouth, in his eyes, engorged and bleeding light. That’s how he looks, Rodimus thinks, like someone has cut apart and splayed out his face to reveal his every thought. 

Rodimus snarls. He stops pulling away. He can taste the fuel of his combustion system in the back of his intake. Systems stress inside him. “Listen to what?” He grits out. 

Thunderclash’s mouth works around unsaid words. Optics shutter. Rodimus can smell engex on his breath. “I love you,” he reads in the shape of his mouth. But he doesn’t say it. “Stay,” he says instead. “For Drift. For -” _Me_. “For everyone. We have missed you.” One large hand tries to cup his cheek. Rodimus jerks his face away from the touch like it will burn him. Thunderclash’s expression does not crumple, but a deeper sense of pain makes itself known the quirk of his optical orbits and the deepening of the corners of his mouth. “Give us peace, yes, allow us to know each other once more. Let us learn about Ignis, about what this means for us. We will leave you command of yourselves, as free citizens, if only you follow our laws.” 

“You don’t have the power to make that kind of decision.” 

“I have more power than you would think.” 

“Why did you leave me behind?”

Thunderclash lets him go. Guilt makes him seem smaller. “We were told you were dead. It was - we could not risk a run-in with the DJD, not yet, and we knew it was only a matter of time until they caught up with us. We decided that we could not risk searching for your frame. When it came to light that you might not be... Rodimus, we were never sure you were alive. Not until we heard your voice on that comm call.” 

“But you thought I might be.” 

“The books.”

“The books.” Rodimus swallows, the walls of his dry intake rasping against each other. “The books, of course.” 

“Please. Come with us to Cyberutopia. This is your ship. It has always been your ship.” 

“I left it to Drift in my will.” 

“You’re not dead.” 

He looks around. Any sign that he had ever inhabited this room, the long nights he’d spent here with Thunderclash, the last vestiges of his captainship that had not yet vanished when he’d left, are gone. He’s been wiped from the room. From the ship itself, probably. “Rodimus died a long time ago.” 

“Please -” 

“Look. If Ig’s _not_ in trouble, we’re done. I’ll talk to Megatron or Ultra Magnus about what we’re doing on the ship. We don’t take charity. We’ll figure the rest out.” He’s pulling away, frame already turning towards the door. He’s done what he’d come here to do, talked to the captain of the ship about his son, and now he has better things to do.

Thunderclash follows him back onto the bridge. Rodimus leaves him behind, there, to the questions of the bridge crew. 

\-- 

The three mechs slipped into the settled tunnel. Mural lights smear across their shined plating, creating odd reflections on the walls. Only Hot Rod, with his matte finish, settles into the strange lighting properly. Here in the dark they have started to notice other things. The dimness of his optics, for one, and the way he seems to settle in the strange lighting. He’s just another shape in the dark, a soft and smeared shape. 

They follow him in a hush. There is something sacred about these tunnels, surrounded on every side by knowledge. There is a code-deep instinct to all of them that these are ancient, special places. _Archivia_. Bolt rolls the word around in his mouth, and it settles in the back of his throat like a sip of warm engex. 

Hot Rod chatters. He points out interesting murals, providing skittering explanations that rise and fall with his interest, making grand, sweeping gestures with a deeply serious expression. His voice chases them down the tunnels, leading them unerringly towards a promised settlement. “We’d be there already,” he admits after a time, “If we were going there right away.” 

Igniter understands the need to be circumspect. 

He’s still surprised when Hot Rod leads them not into an encampment but into a huge, echoing chamber painted like the sky above. The little bot settles cross-legged at the center of the floor, helm tipped up to the sky. The edges of the mural stand out in sharp reliefs of gold and copper, but the sky itself is a deep, rich blue only visible from the pinpricks of picked-out light that are the constellations in glowpaint. It takes Igniter a moment to realize that sets of stars have been painted in different colors, in some code that he does not understand. 

Settling on the floor beside the mech, he echoes his stance. Bolt stays near the entrance, guarding their way back. There is a long silence, where Ignite can only look at the walls. 

The mural is a work of art unlike those he has yet seen, where the paintings have been done over each other, as if the colonists here ran out of space long ago. This room remains untouched. Likely it has been repainted, or restored, but he can see none of that now. He can pick out familiar landmarks at the base of the room, here the Manganese Mountains and there the Pious Pools, the badlands stretching out in flat but textured paint, but the stars above him are not stars he recognizes. Their shapes do not make sense to him, the constellations meaningless. He has seen the night sky more than the once or twice most Nyons do, and he knows the lights that have guided him between cities. These are not those lights. 

“They’re coming,” Hot Rod says, dragging him from his thoughts. 

“Who is?” 

“Our Clan leader ‘n my carrier.” 

“Clan?” 

Hot Rod shrugs. “See that shape,” he says, and points at the false sky. “The one that looks like a face? That’s the Necrobot’s home. They say he protects all young undocumented mechs who venture out into the universe, changing the records to reflect our existence. He was a real mech, you know.” He looks at Igniter. “Real as any of us. But we write legends about him ‘cause legends are the only things that last.” 

“Hot Rod, what is a clan?” 

Hot Rod looks to an entrance on the far side of the room, one of five. After a moment two pairs of optics, one bright yellow and the other acid green, click on. Two mechs in matte paint come forward, small and lithe, with sharp spoilers and long limbs. The smaller of the two has deep pink paint, like old energon, and highlights of a brighter pink and blue. Long sensor horns crown his helm, and his spoiler is longer than most Racer’s, imitating winglets. His face is very pretty, with a blue painted mouth and sharp features. The larger one is painted in shades of yellow, even his optics, from a deep umber to a bright, pale shade that is almost white. Their paint is clean and bright, which is strange for a Nyan, but they have the same hungry look he’s seen in the faces of his bots. 

“We,” the smaller one says, “Are a clan.” 

Igniter nearly does not see the speaker, laying optics on the gold mech. “Flare,” he murmurs. He glances at the new mech, knowing him from datapads and races. “Thrill. I watched you race last season.” 

“You did?” Thrill smiles at him, warm and open. “Wonderful. Care to tell me why you’re in our lands, Igniter?” 

“Hot Rod invited me.” 

His once-lover approaches more quickly than Thrill, leaning down to scoop up Hot Rod from his side. Flare balances Hot Rod on his hip, perched oddly comfortably there. 

“He spoke of quite a few things.” Igniter adds.

Thrill circles him, and he is forced to turn to keep him in his sights. Green optics, such a strange and unfamiliar color in Nyon, burn bright in the dim cavern. “Such as?” He purrs. 

Igniter remembers the other use for Racers outside of Nyon. He can hear Bolt’s vents pick up. His own rattle as he shuts them off manually. “That there is a community beneath the city. That you exist outside the purview of the government. Outside the caste system. And that you know things.” 

“And?” 

“That you can help my mechs. Pass messages. Provide a safe place for us to hide. Teach us.” 

“You expect us to do all that? In return for what?” Thrill says. 

“What would you ask for?”

There are stories of fey, dark things that linger in the depths of Primus’ frame. Things that eat people. Things that, if you strike a deal with them, will lead you to victory. They know all. They see all. 

They will take your spark and consume it so that neither Primus nor Unicron will lay claim to it. 

He has grown to trust Hot Rod, despite his Racer’s frame and the look in his optics, hungry sharp toothed. 

Thrill looks up at him, broad spoiler wings rising up to frame his helm. There is a faint smudge of glowpaint around his optics and over his cheeks, caught in thin plating seams. Green, like his optics. A glance towards Flare, one that lingers longer than he intends, shows the same nearly-slobbish paint removal, though his is the same bright gold of his biolights. 

“Your secrets,” Thrill says. “Your processors, so that you never betray us. Your loyalty. Your willingness to protect our home and your sworn oath that nothing in these tunnels come to harm or defacement. Your oath to keep your war above us, where it belongs, and energon to sustain us through it.” 

“Is that all?” 

“Is that some small thing, to you?” 

“They say that the monsters beneath the city take your spark from your chest, when you make deals like this. That you eat it, so that we might never break our word.” 

At this Thrill laughs, helm thrown back and shoulders shaking. It transforms him from a cold slip of a frame to something warm and open. Out of the corner of his optic he can see Hot Rod squirming in Flare’s arms.

“We don’t eat sparks!” He yelps. 

Flare pats his crest vent. “Of course not,” he murmurs. In his smooth tones it almost sounds like a lie. “Now be quiet. You know the rules.” 

“If you expect us to take your sparks, mech, we will.” Laughter still clings to the staticy edges of his words. “Any of your mechs who step into our tunnels - we take their spark, and they belong to us. And in return we give you safe passage between the cities, we teach you, we take those who do not belong on the surface any longer.” 

“You would take my word for it?” 

“Hardly.” There is an odd lilt to his voice, lost nearly to the way the cavern seems to swallow sound. “But we will see how much you can be trusted.” 

“You’ll be watching us.” 

Thrill raises an optical ridge as he steps away, broad spoiler wings fluttering. “Get out of our tunnels. Hot Rod will show you the way back. It seems he’s chosen a profession without our input. He will liaise with you.” 

“I will!” Hot Rod yelps over Flare’s hissed anger. He begins to squirm again, to escape the hold of the larger mech. When his feet hit the ground he darts past Igniter and towards Bolt. “Come on, I’ve got to show you the Muralist tunnel!” 

“Hot Rod-” Flare calls out, hurrying after him. 

This leaves Thrill and Igniter alone. 

“What is a clan, Thrill?” 

The mech smiles at him, revealing flat, even denta. “Why Igniter, you don’t expect me to reveal our secrets so soon?” 

He turns sharply on his heel. Igniter watches the flare of his spoiler as he slides through the shadows that cling to the cavern and disappears into the tunnels once more.  
\---


End file.
